


wipe the sweat from my brow (get to rely on you)

by Tohje



Series: Visions made of flesh and light [2]
Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anakin eventually collecting all the masters, Don't copy to another site, Fix-It, M/M, Repressed Idiots In Love Try To Talk About Their Feelings, Romance, Sickfic, That's Not How The Force Works, Uh-Oh That'll Go Well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-11 19:30:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18430613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tohje/pseuds/Tohje
Summary: Recovery is hard, feelings are harder, and Trials are the hardest of them all.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is not a WIP, but my wonderful, wonderful beta has a life, obviously. All hail her grace.
> 
> Sequel to the fic the reason i come alive. 
> 
> Italics denote thoughts, < > denote mind speech.

“Our planet spins on its axis; atoms spin; the liveliest equilibrium seems to require vertigo.”

Guy Davenport, Introduction to Anne Carson’s _Glass, Irony & God _

 

1.

 

Being awake was kriffing exhausting.

 

Obi-Wan succumbed to the Force deprivation shock after the first initial outburst, because the galaxy was just built that way. According to the healers, it was a “relatively mild one, considering the circumstances”, but still. He bit his tongue and shook and spasmed until the healers conceded and allowed Qui-Gon back to his bedside. Under the large, warm hands and the Living Force they channeled, the tremors subsided to shivers, then finally ceased. Afterwards, he felt like a herd of nerfs had run over him.    

 

Initially he managed to stay awake only from five to ten minutes at the time, but was slowly improving.

 

It took all of his already damaged control not to mope, because now he dreamed, unlike when he had dwelled in the darkness of his own making.

 

The healers explained that his brain tried to come to terms with the unbelievable Force phenomenon he had let loose on himself and his master, leading to disjointed nightmares.

 

Like this most recent one, what a delightful example: the dark water rose and rose, drowning his master, who just stood there in the middle of the pond, dark robes wet and heavy as he let it happen, refusing even to look at the yelling, frantic padawan. The dark pond was blood suddenly, not water; it was oozing through his hands, forming a sizzling, steaming pool. The high-pitched, never ending wailing came from nowhere and he couldn’t see Qui-Gon anymore, the voice and the blood hiding him from Obi-Wan.

 

He woke up retching empty gulps of air, tasting stomach acids and feeling the special mix of fatigue and panic he associated with an awful mission he and Qui-Gon had endured when he was eighteen. The chokepox epidemic had broken loose on a large migration fleet they had been assisting on a three tenday long journey.

 

“What an old connection to make.” Qui-Gon’s hand was carding through his sweaty hair. Apparently his shielding was still abysmal.

 

“I’m sorry master. This is repugnant,” he panted.

 

“Nonsense.” A pause, a frown Obi-Wan could sense. “About abandonment, again?”

 

“... yes.” His voice was small. He wasn’t supposed to be this needy.

 

Obi-Wan leaned back on his pillows. Next to him, his master straightened his spine. The hand fell away.

 

“I had thought we were long past the days when my compulsions gave you a reason to doubt your self-worth, padawan. These are my shortcomings, not yours.”

 

Obi-Wan contemplated if he had energy to go through this. How many minutes did he have left? He turned his head. His master looked constrained, not that many beings in the galaxy would be able to tell, but his posture was just a little too rigid.

 

“Whose turn is it to cling to a past and its pains? You’re a hoarder, master. You hoard blame like some beings hoard treasures.” He knew he was taking monstrous liberties under the guise of malady.

 

His master closed off, the tiniest of movement more in the bond than in a physical realm.

 

“Are you sure you’re up to this right now? Your focus should be on healing.” Qui-Gon’s words echoed Obi-Wan’s earlier outermost thoughts.

 

“Why hold onto all that?” Obi-Wan queried mildly, determined not to be led astray. Let no one claim he didn’t learn from the best when it came to persistence.

 

A charged silence.

 

“The Force hasn’t shown me yet where I can put it down.”

 

_Well, at least he doesn’t deny it_.

 

“You --- I forgive you, I already forgave you on Naboo, are you listening to me?”

 

“Your heart has always been supremely vast, padawan.” The rare, fond smile. Blast it, he was too tired and weakened and irritated, he couldn’t deal with a skipping heart right now.  

 

“Do you even understand what you’re forgiving?”

 

“I forgive that you were afraid. Because you promised to stop. < _I heard you. > _ ” _Look who’s being greedy in addition to needy. You are allowed to accept, only accept, not ask. Not demand, I’m in enough trouble already._

 

His master closed his eyes, his face withdrawn. “We need to meditate together,” Qui-Gon hedged.

 

“Yes, master.” A miserable rasp, an acquiescence. “Do you think they’ll let me come back home anytime soon?” _Back to you._ Force, he always reduced to a snot-nosed youngling when he was truly sick.

 

“I…”

 

Obi-Wan loathed that his illness made his master look for words. It was so out of character for Qui-Gon, whose life’s work and reputation were built on being the most adept, and the most competent with words.

 

“I don’t know, padawan. I find myself uncertain that I could take care of you properly at the moment. What if something happens? What if you relapse? You’re in a vulnerable state, even more in the Force than in here, and I’m afraid to do anything that might undermine the equilibrium.”

 

Obi-Wan pouted in a way he was sure he hadn’t since he was twelve. After realizing his reaction, he cringed. His master was right. His Force felt drugged and slippery, his control over his reactions and shields unpredictable and himself wrung out. _What if I let something loose behind my inner shields? Onto him? Accept, you’re allowed to accept your feelings for him, not demand! You don’t_ **_need_ ** _it, you only want._

 

Grogginess crept back, and Obi-Wan was grateful. He almost missed Qui-Gon’s whisper.

 

The most gentle Force suggestion to sleep, more like suspiration. And just on the edge of slumber:

 

“Rest. I won't risk you again, not even in this small way.”

 

_Is it allowed to hope?_ Obi-Wan wondered before he plunged over.

 

***

 

For a moment, Qui-Gon had a double vision when his padawan fell asleep again. Obi-Wan felt like a near-drowned tooka kitten in the Force, fumbling and ragged. The padawan had stepped into the next dream almost immediately, no peaceful lull in-between. His dream-vision of the nighttime Coruscant skyline interleaved with the real, buzzing afternoon silhouette behind the window, until Qui-Gon blinked.  

 

His padawan was falling endlessly in his sleep, the glittering megalopolis whooshing by the dreamscape.

 

_He’s so outspread_ , Qui-Gon thought. Even though he knew no harm would come to his padawan here in the heart of the Temple, leaving the bedside unguarded when the padawan was in this state went against his instincts.

 

Obi-Wan was lost among the glittering lights now, still falling, searching. At least the desperate edge of the earlier dream was dulled, a tangy taste in Qui-Gon’s mouth the only reminder.

 

_What is the light you’re seeking? I hope you find it. Mine burns so brightly. I’m hopelessly, selfishly drawn to it because it promises forgiveness._

 

They needed to meditate together, the sooner the better.

 

_You promised him to stop running,_ his wily mind whispered _. Look what happened when you tried to control entropy last time. He_ **_is_ ** _your downfall and your deliverance. He’s your heart out there. His presence changes your isolated life every day._

 

_And I’ll be Sith-damned if I tie him down and demand he be my walking stick when he barely escaped my compulsive folly. He doesn’t deserve that kind of burden when he’s so close to knighthood and recovering ---_

 

A polite tap on the doorframe gave Qui-Gon just enough time to gather himself and wrestle his thoughts into submission. Anakin slipped in. Qui-Gon wasn’t sure what to make of the boy’s new habit of shrinking himself to unobtrusiveness, both here in the physical realm and in the Force. It could tell of either old traumas or new troubles. He made a mental note to mention it to Mace and probe a bit if the opportunity presented itself.

 

“Master Qui-Gon,” his almost-padawan bowed. “I was on my way here when master Yoda stopped me. He requires your presence.” As always, there was wariness when Anakin mentioned the tiny green master.

 

Qui-Gon grimaced internally. No doubt Yoda had sensed his inner disturbance somehow. The tidings about his avoidance of the mind healers’ quarters might also have reached his grandmaster. Or the complaints of his and Mace’s abrupt decisions about Anakin had finally gotten loud enough. Either way, his shins were in serious danger.

 

“Can you watch over him for a while, Ani? Obi-Wan is quite defenceless right now. I would feel better if somebody I trust watched his back while I’m gone.”

 

Anakin shuddered, dropping his diminished stance like the mask it was. “Yeah, okay. His dreams have ached my teeth two days straight. I feel bad for him.” At Qui-Gon’s startled gaze, Anakin added hastily, “I don’t think anyone else has noticed though, master. The Force just sort of… wanted to make a point to me, I think. Master Mace got a whiff through me though, I’m sorry.”

 

Before Qui-Gon had even begun to make sense of _that_ , something else registered in Anakin’s mercurial mind, and he looked astounded.

 

“Wait, master. You trust him with me. After… after what I caused?”

 

“Of course Anakin. You’re in better control now. Besides,” Qui-Gon leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “I need somebody here who isn’t afraid of healer Gaor’s coffee breath. That thing could slay draigons.” He smiled as Anakin stood a little straighter and the boy nodded vigorously.

 

“I’ve got comm with me. You can call me immediately if anything unusual happens, all right?”

 

“Sure thing, master!” He sensed the boy’s determination to overcome any possible obstacle on his own, to prove himself.  

 

When Qui-Gon allowed himself one last glance over his shoulder, Anakin had climbed to his chair and was holding Obi-Wan’s limb hand in both of his. “Hello mister - sorry, padawan Kenobi. We haven’t met properly in a long time, but master Qui-Gon says I’m to watch over you when he’s gone and you can count on me, unlike last time, I promise. I’ll be very careful.”

 

Qui-Gon turned, felt his stomach do weird flips, and resolved to walk through the Temple very slowly or his grandmaster would have the whole ammunition of his feelings served to him on a silver platter.

 

***

 

He was surfacing again, and truth be told, the dream had gotten repetitive a while ago. How he was supposed to find that one special light among millions when endless layers of Coruscant whirled by at dizzying speed?

 

He hated flying free-fall, even only in his dreams. It made him nauseous to the bone.

 

“Okay, okay, you’re going to be sick aren’t you, I can tell, where’s the _stoopa_ bucket, master Qui-Gon must’ve taken it with him, thinkthinkthink --- “

 

“Under the bed,” Obi-Wan croaked, and somebody managed to snatch the bucket almost on time.

 

He hated flying, real or imaginary, period.

 

Obi-Wan emerged, wiping his mouth, and a pair of bright, interested eyes peered at him behind the recently shorn, yet still somehow unruly, blond hair.

 

“How are you doing that? You haven’t eaten anything solid in weeks!”

 

Anakin. Clothed in junior padawan’s robes, tiny braid sticking out behind his ear, tan fading, looking healthier, dimples appearing hesitantly.  

 

Obi-Wan resisted the urge to groan, or close his eyes and fall back to sleep, or do both. “I’m talented that way,” he offered weakly instead. “Did you escape my assault unscathed? I’m sorry for the mess.”

 

“You don’t have to worry. You couldn’t help it. I’ve been cleaning far worse back at home. This is nothing compared to hung-over Hutts.” The boy blushed. “Not that you want to hear about that when you feel awful already. Stomach flus are the worst _,_ aren’t they? Mom used to ---” the blush deepened. “Master Qui-Gon says I’m a chatterbox when I’m nervous. I’ll clean this away.” Anakin disappeared from his line of sight.

 

_Master Qui-Gon._ Oh Force, this was shaping to be a trying day...hour...moment of wakefulness, whatever. This would be a fine time for his control to return from the prolonged holiday.

 

_If I take it out on the boy, I have to tell the Council I’m not ready for the Trials no matter what that fool of a master of mine thinks,_ Obi-Wan thought. It was _not_ self-pity he tasted in his mouth. Just bile.

 

“You miss your mom, don’t you?” he tried to sound gentle, but wasn’t sure if it didn’t come out anything more than subdued. “I bet your mom knows just the tricks to make you feel better when you are sick.” A fleeting memory of his own Crèchemaster and stomach flus crossed his mind, and he was quite sure his smile was genuine this time.

 

Anakin’s head popped back up. “Yeah, she’s wizard with herbs! Her medicines always taste horrid, but they help. Kinda like saber drills. I mean, it has to suck first and then it gets better eventually, or so I’m told.”

 

“I’m sure she enjoys the comparison when you write to her.”

 

The boy wrinkled his nose at him. “You’re using irony, aren’t you? We’re learning about that in the literature class. That one sucks too, it’s so difficult, my written formal Basic is _poodoo.”_ There was the blush again. “I apologize for my language, padawan Kenobi.”

 

Seven Siths and their offspring, nobody had the right to be that cuddlesome when they were literally cleaning up your messes. Speaking of which:

 

“I have to thank you for taking care of master Qui-Gon when I wasn’t here, padawan-brāthn. I know you’ve been by his side a lot.” It didn’t cost him anything to use the title, and Anakin probably didn’t recognize it anyway.

 

Anakin shrugged and returned to his task. “He really doesn’t care for the mundane, does he?”

 

Obi-Wan didn’t catch a short, sad chuckle, which escaped his lips. That was his master, all right.

 

“Wait!” Anakin straightened, holding a foul smelling bucket and a rag. “You mean I can write to her?! My master said nothing! Maybe he wouldn’t approve, come to think of it...more likely the idea hasn’t even crossed his mind, you know. It’s all Temple this and Coruscant that to him, anyway. He really doesn’t understand families outside the Temple kind of way.” The boy didn’t sound angry, more fond and a little exasperated with one’s master’s behavior, like a much older senior padawan. Still, Obi-Wan was startled. That definitely _wasn’t_ like Qui-Gon.

 

“Anakin, I’m a touch slow on the uptake right now, and contacts with birth families aren’t usually encouraged until much later in our training, but if you just mentioned this to Qui-Gon I’m sure he --- “

 

“No, no, no,” Anakin was shaking his head while he marched to the doorframe and requested a maintenance droid via control panel. “They need to get along so badly. I won’t ask master Qui-Gon to do the pleading for me! They have had so much else on their minds lately. But I believe my master will understand when I explain it to him.”

 

Obi-Wan stared at him.

 

“I’m not asking any special treatment in my training! I’m not! Maybe I should wait, you know, so that they don't get more ammunition against him. I wish they would leave my master alone already!”

 

Obi-Wan remembered how fascinated he had been with the word pair “my master” during the first few months after Qui-Gon took him as his padawan, but this was getting ridiculous.   

 

“I… I haven’t got a chance to say congratulations yet, Anakin. Who was the kind master who saw through our - yes, mine too, I haven’t apologized to you yet - biases?”

 

Anakin tapped the droid away gently and climbed back to what Obi-Wan had started to think of as Qui-Gon’s chair. His legs dangled in the air.

 

“Oh, sure, you’ve been awake such a short time, master Qui-Gon hasn’t had time to tell you about it.”

 

_Time and chance are my master’s best servants. I bet ten credits he hasn’t found time yet, sure._ Remembering the boy wasn’t very fond of irony, Obi-Wan only nodded. Anakin looked dispirited. 

 

“It’s complicated and I don’t understand everything about it. Anyhow, master Mace was against my training in the beginning, but then he explained he had this thing called shatterpoint, and it changed things. I think he still has some reservations, but I’m working very hard and he defends me and master Qui-Gon helps a lot and ---”

 

A shrill déjà vu from the Force submerged Anakin’s next words. Obi-Wan’s shields still in tatters, it collided with his mind with brute pressure.

 

“ _He didn’t want me as his padawan, not really, but the Force and master Yoda convinced him and he’s being the most patient with me and I’m working very hard to prove him and master Tahl helps, and truly, you don’t have to worry about me.”_

 

His head was swimming, old hurts he had thought long ago dealt with mixing up with a rush of empathy. Master Windu would better root these fears out from the start, or Force help him, Obi-Wan was going to behave impolitely indeed.

 

The Force pulsed a warning.      

 

Anakin’s sentence broke down the middle. The boy’s face went slack and his mouth dropped open. Then he jolted violently and curled up in the chair, protecting his head with his hands.

 

“I don’t understand! What did I do, _what did I do?_ NO! Why are you doing this?” the boy wailed, sounding heartbreakingly young, and Obi-Wan was already pushing himself up from the bed and reaching up to him without a conscious decision to do so.    

 

***

 

Yoda was glaring at them both. Qui-Gon hadn’t been surprised in the slightest when he had arrived and found Mace already there. The Harun Kal master was kneeling on the meditation cushion, his back ramrod straight, his face a picture of masterly serenity. The air in the dimmed rooms of the Order’s oldest and wisest was vibrating with undercurrents.

 

Qui-Gon suppressed yet another sigh - “ _puttering_ **_and_ ** _long suffering.” Shut up, padawan. Why are you still in my head? He’s woken up!_ \- and folded himself to his grandmaster’s eye level.

 

“The burden, the boy carries,” Yoda stated with finality the minute he had settled. So much for the niceties, then.

 

Mace opened his eyes, and the dark gleam challenged the grandmaster’s boggy green.

 

“Do you have complaints about how I handle my padawan’s wellbeing?” Mace’s back was impossibly straight.

 

“Consider, both of you did not, how it would affect you. Force suggestion, he carries within. Ask yourself, you must, how you would have acted if you had known.”

 

“For the ever loving… _what_ are you blabbering about? My padawan is about as subtle as a brick wall in the Force right now. There’s no way he could manage something so complicated. Whatever you think you’re sensing, old troll, I can assume it’s not that. You’re grasping at straws.”

 

Qui-Gon had the same feeling when he arrived at the negotiations, where the opposing parties hadn’t had the patience to wait for the mediator and started hurling past grudges at each other. Force, but Anakin was right. These two used to be so tight that every initiate knew some joke about Long Commtower and Short Hovercar.

 

“That the boy created it, I did not say, did I?” Yoda’s eyes were slits, his hold on a gimer stick deliberately lax.

 

“What are you suggesting, that someone affected our decisions, my decisions? The situation was chaotic, I admit that, but somebody had to act, you know it, and I didn’t felt a damn thing. I don’t like breaching tradition any more than you do. You have to understand that ---”

 

“I felt the compulsion. Or the absence of compulsion, after I first woke up after bacta,” Qui-Gon blurted, interrupting in a way that seemed impolite and clumsy, fitting for his large looming frame. It had actually been honed to perfection as a diversion tactic by master Dooku.  

 

Mace gaped at him. “Why didn’t you say anything before, at the Gardens?”

 

“I thought it was my own doing. Caused by my own...shortcomings. Shortsightedness,” he confessed with a head held high, looking his grandmaster straight in the eyes. A look flickered across Yoda’s face for a second, the look he remembered from his padawan years when padawan Jinn and master Dooku had had one of their clashes. It had soothed him then, had promised a guided meditation and a listening ear. Now, he wasn’t so sure.

 

“Watching young Skywalker I’ve been for days. Uncomfortable it has made him, no doubt. Created by the boy, this compulsion wasn’t. Only good she meant for the boy. Only to protect him, I suppose. Aware of this, the boy isn’t.”

 

“Shmi,” Qui-Gon breathed. “Anakin’s mother,” he added, and Mace looked like he had just remembered something unpleasant.

 

“My guess that would be also, yes. Have come to the Temple, she would, if we had found her. Complexly woven it is, deeply hidden and foreign. Ritualistic patterns, ritual weaving I’m thinking. To tell us more, the young Skywalker probably could, about slaves and their magics, their protections and hopes. Much more powerful than simply bending a mind to somebody’s will. Meant for the master’s eyes, for the owner’s eyes. To see the worth, to see the talent, to see the profit, and to be protective, to approve, to be aware.”

 

“It’s definitely tightly intent, otherwise it would have affected Obi-Wan, or the Council for that matter. But it was already targeted at me, practically invisible to any other. I guess my foray into the Force went far enough that it set compulsion free again,” Qui-Gon pondered.

 

“So you’re saying,” Mace started, a storm gathering on his face, “that the sacred bond is severely compromised. That I’ve made my choice under false pretenses. That I’m fighting this battle with myself and with this Order for the wrong reasons.”

 

Yoda puffed his cheeks. “Expecting, I was, that this stance you would take master Windu. Mislead you in purpose, the boy did not. Change who the boy is in essence, the compulsion doesn’t. Extremely aware of the potential, it makes you. Still afraid, still talented, young Skywalker is. Still kind-hearted, still seeks justice. Still willful, still hungry, still difficult to flex in his beliefs, still courageous, still loyal. Knew all this, you did, already when you made your decision.”

 

_Knew all this, you did, already when you looked in the mirror._ Qui-Gon was careful not to let the thought escape his shields, but Yoda’s ear tips quivered minutely.

 

Mace rose from the cushion and the gathering storm clouds followed him. “You must excuse me, masters,” he bowed and hurried to the door.

 

“Sever the bond, I forbid you to,” Yoda barked. Mace halted at the door frame. Qui-Gon was afraid Korun master’s back would snap.

 

“You alone have no authority over the matter, whatever my decision will be,” Mace growled, not facing either of them.

 

“Forbid it, I do!” the gimer stick clanked to the floor with every word.

 

“Mace. Think this through before you act.” He wasn’t pleading, no, but Qui-Gon remembered old decisions on taking padawans, and Yoda’s machinations, and he worried.

 

“You got what you wanted, in the end,” Mace’s voice was distant. “I need to get to the bottom of this. I’ll be at the Sand Gardens.”

 

“You _know_ I don’t want Anakin as --- “ Qui-Gon started, but the other master was already gone from the door.

 

The Sand Gardens were barren, uncompromising desert gardens at the top of the small southeastern tower, banned from initiates and padawans. It was a place where one went to release persistent pain, a place for unyielding beings bent against their will to crude, broken shapes. A place for merciless introspection.

 

A place for those who didn’t know how to let things go.

 

Qui-Gon had practically lived there the first weeks after Xanatos, hiding. He hadn’t visited them since.

 

He looked back to Yoda and could almost see a mountain of years on his hunched shoulders. The storm raged against the mountainside.

 

“You have been picking at him and questioning his decisions for weeks now,” Qui-Gon realized. “Sometimes all the meddling will blow up on your pretty face, grandmaster.”

 

“Enough!” Yoda glowered. “What is required, I do. When he faces opposition, Mace Windu has always worked best. No exception, Anakin Skywalker is. No exception, changes are. No exception, protecting the Order is.”

 

“If it’s confusion the future wants, not clarity, then by the Force, that’s what it will get,” the troll continued, muttering to himself, more irate than Qui-Gon had perhaps ever heard from him.

 

“Does it always have to be you, my master? Wouldn’t somebody else suffice?” Qui-Gon asked gently. His grandmaster sometimes thought and acted like he was the only adult in the room. From his point of view, that was probably the truth, but Yoda had always been protective of the Order’s youngsters. Problems started when he extended that righteous protectiveness bordering on arrogance to kriffing everybody under four hundred years old.  

 

_You hope that somebody else changes, that he changes, so you don’t have to anymore._ Qui-Gon thought, but let the confrontation slide.

 

Yoda was now regarding him with his gentle grandfatherly troll face on, but Qui-Gon wasn’t fooled. Dooku had learned his skills from a certain someone.

 

“Overlooked the importance of family, we temple-bred once again did. Affected by the suggestion you were.”

 

_Ah. Back to_ **_my_ ** _individualism._

 

“It used nothing that wasn’t in me already,” Qui-Gon maintained. “You said it yourself. It only heightens the potential, seeks to protect the charge. The compulsion offered a neat, easy solution. In my cowardice, I took it eagerly.”

 

Yoda’s ears rose upwards. “Easy solution, hm? About that, I wondered. Firmly, you stated earlier that ready your padawan for his Trials was not. Easy solution, I imagined it was not.”

 

Qui-Gon took a measured breath.

 

“He carries my heart. I was scared to death when I realized that. Compulsion saw that, used it. I made mistakes because of that fear.” Such simple words, plain sentences. Out there in the world now, no longer containable.

 

“Talked about this with him you have not, hmm? Meditated together on this, you have not?”

 

“He’s still my padawan who lays on his sickbed because of my arrogance. He will be an exceptional and luminous young knight soon, and I’m his old master. Of course I haven’t.”

 

“Know you, what Code dictates about these matters. Advised against it, it is. Almost impossible to stay in balance, to stay in the Light. A difficult road, that one, almost always not recommended,” Yoda hummed. Qui-Gon took the words and surveyed them closely. He heard the absent words even more clearly.

 

“I will impose none of this on my padawan. Obi-Wan doesn’t feel anything more towards me than a padawan’s devotion, which I assure you I’ve tried tremendously over these last few months.”

 

“So, admit that the fear has been leading you? What made you stop following?” _Sure can I be that fear doesn’t lead you anymore? Lead you to the dark places, to dark thoughts?_ Qui-Gon could hear the unspoken concerns in the Force.

 

“He forgave me.” Qui-Gon whispered. “I promised to stop being afraid, and he forgave me. What else there is to do when such a gift is offered?”

 

Yoda, honest to Force, gurgled, a low sound from his chest, marking deep amusement.

 

“An unthinkable Force phenomenon for his old, misbehaving, rude master, your padawan delivered. All it took for young padawan to forgive his master was the promise that the master will stop being afraid of his own _feelings_. _Padawan’s_ _devotion._ ”

 

Qui-Gon was already shaking his head. It was impossible. It had been the right thing to do, but he had done it for the wrong reasons, and he had nearly lost---. How do you endure such a paradox? How do you expect or give forgiveness for such a thing?

 

“Whatever he feels for me, I’ve let him down. I still believe compassion and fight for balance make a better Jedi, to my master’s chagrin. The faltering and climb back up are unavoidable. I’ve taught that to Obi-Wan many times. We’ve argued over it many times. His stance on the Code has always been surer than mine. He knows better than me.”  

 

“What the Force wills, Qui-Gon, what the Force wills.” Yoda stood and waved his hand, a clear dismissal. Qui-Gon stood up and bowed. The low cackle followed him out of the door. It left him feeling more childlike than he had experienced in years.

 

It just… wasn’t possible. Sure, considered unwise and potentially dangerous, love and deeper bonds among knights and even masters were rare and frowned upon, but not completely unheard of. The Code strictly forbid it between the ranks. Between equals … they were all on the same tightrope, stumbling over the same “no passion, what about love?” and “no attachment, no emotion, what about compassion?” arguments their Order had been tussling with for centuries, although Qui-Gon readily admitted that his side had also been losing for centuries. Turning one’s head, averting one’s eyes, controlling one’s tongue were considered either weakness, fault, hypocrisy or mercy for the wearied traveller of the same meandering path, depending on the witness.

 

But Obi-Wan had never expressed any particular interest towards the subject. Stars, even if he had, he would probably have a wider selection to choose from than it was normally the case. The young man was well liked and admired among his peers. His choice would definitely not be _him._ He had nothing more to offer than his old, battered heart, and it had gone and decided the matter for him without his permission. _You and your heart are a hopeless cause and you’ve known it since the start, Jinn,_ he rebuked himself.

 

_So, when he returns home, what are you going to do? He made you promise to stop hiding._

 

He didn’t know.

 

The comm buzzed just outside Yoda’s chambers. “Master Jinn,”  he heard an urgency in Ne Onossa’s voice. “You’d better contact master Billaba at once.”


	2. Chapter 2

It felt like going against waves higher than your own head. The emotional misery radiating from padawan Kenobi’s room was a tangible thing, thick and almost unprecedented in the Temple, although the healing ward was more familiar with that kind of disturbance than the rest of the Order. Depa, alarmed by her emergency code, skidded to a halt in front of the door at the same time as master Jinn. They exchanged a glance. The grim Togruta healer, who had stood waiting for them, stabbed the controlling panel.

 

Padawan Kenobi was out of bed for the first time in weeks, if his haggard look was any indication. He crouched in front of a smaller figure, who sat curled in on himself, in the chair. The figure diffused anger and distress, breathing quick and loud in the room. At the soft sound of their entering, Kenobi’s head whipped around, his eyes glassy.

 

He bared his teeth and snarled, guarding the child from them with his body.

 

“Get out! Get out! You won’t get him!” His wild eyes fell on Depa. “Don’t come near!”

 

“Padawan! Shields up, _now_!” Master Jinn’s order cracked like an electro whip in the Force. Every padawan probably in a mile radius started and obliged without a thought; an instinct to obey that tone from the master drilled to them since childhood.  

 

Kenobi shook first his head, and then his whole body like a tooka ridding itself of  rainwater. The glazed look vanished from his eyes as he collapsed to the floor, leaning against the chair, revealing Mace’s new padawan.

 

“Obi-Wan?” Jinn called softly, and Kenobi shook his head once more, swaying from one side to the other. The healer approached young Anakin and sent soothing waves in the Force, permeating the blanket of anguish covering the boy.

 

“Master? I’m sorry, I… my shields. Something happened to Anakin, master, and my shields are not… he drove me over.”

 

Jinn hurried across the room, stooped his tall figure down and grabbed Kenobi’s shoulders, steadying him and muttering something under his breath. Behind them, the healer had reached Anakin and was slowly dissolving the miasma of misery. Depa expanded her senses, careful not to disturb the healer’s ministrations.  

 

“What he has done?” Depa breathed.

 

Anakin began to sob in earnest, a sound fitting a much younger child.

 

“Young one, tell me where he is.”

 

“I don’t know, okay, I don’t know! He doesn’t let me in! He --- he _slammed ---_ it hurts!“ Anakin yelled through the tears, and nothing the healer and Depa tried to say could  curb the anger radiating from the boy.

 

“Anakin. Stop it. Control your emotions. I understand,” Kenobi wheezed from the floor.

 

“He said the same!”

 

“I _understand._ You saw it, didn’t you? You saw it… in me.”

 

Jinn’s knuckles, still squeezing Kenobi’s shoulders, turned white.

 

Anakin let out a wail, sliding down from the chair, and promptly tucked himself between Jinn and Kenobi, burying his face in Kenobi’s robes. Kenobi enfolded the boy in a loose embrace, still looking dazed.

 

“I’m so angry at him, I’m not supposed to be, I’m so _angry_ at him and I don’t want to be, _what did I do_?”

 

“I know, I know,” Kenobi kept repeating, his voice hoarse.

 

“At Sand Gardens,” Jinn rasped to Depa.

 

Depa turned on her heels and told herself she was tactically retreating. Anakin’s muffled cries followed her through the door.

 

***

 

“No hoverchair.”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous, padawan Kenobi.”

 

“No hoverchair.”

 

“Don’t expect me to come running when you fall on your arse in the Great Hall. In fact, don’t except release recommendation at all.”

 

“No hover -” Obi-Wan glanced at Anakin, who stood silently next to Qui-Gon. The boy said nothing, but he didn’t have to. Tiredness and shame and the lingering pain showed on his streaked face. And then there was Qui-Gon, steadfastly avoiding his eyes. His master didn’t think this was a good idea.

 

“Fine.”

 

“Daily checkups. All and every straining exercise is strictly forbidden from here to the unseen future. You’re not even to take walks. You’re not supposed to leave your apartment. From bed to sofa, that’s your goal for now. No meditation on your knees.”

 

“Fine!”

 

“One of you must keep a level head, and like a gullible fool I am, I trust it to be you, master Jinn. I’ll send the medical droid with his inhibitors and right dosages first thing in the morning.”

 

“Naturally, Ne.”

 

Theirs was the lopsided and limping homecoming. His hoverchair made small, squeaky sounds as they passed the quiet evening corridors and halls. Anakin sniffed every now and then. Qui-Gon appeared to be deep in thought.

 

“Fresher and a bed for you,” Qui-Gon ordered Anakin when he put the lights on, and Obi-Wan gingerly hopped down from the chair. Anakin nodded, said a quiet “Yes master,” and disappeared to their storage closet, obviously well acquainted with his surroundings. A moment later, as Obi-Wan staggered to the sofa and sat heavily down, the boy padded past him and to the fresher, big towel hanging from his shoulder. Qui-Gon had also performed a disappearing act, and he heard a rattle from the kitchen.

 

Obi-Wan looked around and frowned. The rooms weren’t particularly messy, but he had a feeling like they were back from a long mission and the quartermaster had forgotten to order a cleaning procedure. Like he should open balcony doors for fresh air and hunt down crisp linens. All of their things and furniture were where they supposed to be, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of desolation.

 

In fact… things were _exactly_ where they had left them. His master had been stuck in the middle of that same deep space romance novel well before Naboo. The sapir leaves in the forgotten tea mug on the windowsill were probably gaining sentience. His door was slightly ajar? He remembered slamming it half-carelessly shut when they were hurriedly departing for Naboo the second time, confused and defiant, cursing under his breath when it bounced back on its hinges.  

 

It seemed time had frozen at the point just before the catastrophe.

 

Anakin emerged from the fresher, and Obi-Wan’s master most decidedly did not from the kitchen. The boy had wrapped the towel around himself, his eyes huge and his hair sticking in all directions. He looked very vulnerable, young and hurt, but there was something intentional beneath it all. It felt manipulative in the Force’s murmuring.

 

_This is bad news,_ Obi-Wan thought. _These are old habits, he regressed so fast._ He could feel his master agreeing along their bond, and the transmitted thought was tinged with sorrow.

 

“You can take the bed for the night, Anakin. I’m finding that the upright position keeps nausea at bay, and I’ve slept on this couch on more occasions than I care to remember.”

 

“If you’re sure. You’re pretty sick still.” Anakin shuffled his feet, a non-initiate tell.  

 

“I’m sure. Let’s tuck you into bed, and I can grab blankets and pillows for myself.” Obi-Wan stood up and followed Anakin to his room, propping himself up with walls. He looked away, checking the windowless room while Anakin put on his undertunic and underwear. Time stood still here as well. He doubted nobody had been here since their hasty departure.

 

Anakin tucked himself in, and Obi-Wan sat on the bed.

 

“I’m so angry at him,” Anakin whispered, absorbed in his own emotions the way the children often were. Obi-Wan was grateful for it, because vertigo was lurking behind his eye sockets.

 

“I’m not supposed to be. Anger leads to the dark side, and it sounds awful. It sounds like the dark side _eats_ you,” the boy shuddered.

 

“We don’t know yet why your master did what he did.” For a moment, Obi-Wan tried to come up with a more tender way of asking, but there was none. “Is the bond severed?” he asked.

 

Anakin shivered despite the sonics and blankets. “He… he slammed it shut. Master Mace shut me out, made it clear he didn’t want me near his thoughts or him. It’s… rejection. But… it’s still there.”

 

_Oh, master Windu should_ **_really_ ** _know better. Sometimes you would think that being on a Council required that you had the emotional aptitude of a nerf._

 

“He might be protecting you from something,” Obi-Wan tried to reason.

 

“Well, he so didn’t bother to tell me about it,” Anakin muttered petulantly. “I’m sorry I overrode you. I don’t do that in purpose, I swear. I’m getting the hang of it, but I somehow always manage to botch things up when I’m with you. You must think I’m a nuisance.”

 

“It’s all right,” Obi-Wan assured. “Had I been in the right state of mind, you would never have gotten past my shields.”

 

Anakin snuffled for a moment, and Obi-Wan had time to think the boy was falling asleep.

 

“Were you this angry? Back then, with master Qui-Gon? When he didn’t want you?” Anakin whispered.

 

Obi-Wan closed his eyes and curbed his wince. So, the boy had seen at least the glimpses of it. The galaxy had seemingly decided that this nine-year-old would bear witness to all his lows, present or past.

 

“I was quite different from you. My anger turned inward. I thought I wasn’t good enough, that he had seen something in me that deemed me not worthy.”

 

Anakin mulled over his words sleepily. “Well, that’s bantha _poodoo._ I’ve never seen anybody as light as you. I think you could float away to the Force if you wanted to.”

 

Obi-Wan smiled down at the boy self-deprecatingly. “What you see now took years of molding, shaping and working by myself and my master. We rarely see past people’s outer layers, Force-sensitives or not, it is so in this case too. Anyway, later I discovered that… has Qui-Gon ever mentioned anybody named Xanatos to you?”

 

Anakin had a small pucker between his eyebrows. “No, I would remember such a funny name.”

 

“It’s not my tale to tell. Somebody named Xanatos was very important to my master once. Xanatos turned his back to the Light, and Qui-Gon, and my master was still hurting tremendously when we first met. It made him treat me harshly in the beginning. This is not a justification, Anakin, only an explanation. It’s long in the past and dealt with, your turmoil just resurfaced some old things from my unprotected psyche.”

 

Anakin’s eyes were dark and bright. “This Xanatos person was master Qui-Gon’s padawan, wasn’t he?”

 

“Yes. But the rest of the tale belongs to him.”

 

“Is that the point of the Code, then? I didn’t understand it before. When they advise us to let go of strong feelings, peace and serenity and all that? It felt horrible, like they were commanding me to let go of mom, or Padmé. But feelings made master Qui-Gon treat you unfairly, did they not? They made me treat you badly.”

 

Obi-Wan sighed and remembered Anakin’s reverent look on Tatooine when he had first realized he might become a real Jedi knight. Toppling statues wasn’t Obi-Wan’s favorite past time.

 

“We try our best to let go of attachments, that’s true. But even Jedi get damaged. Some of us think it’s not worth the trouble. Some of us think compassion is more important, connecting ourselves to another living being is worth the inevitable pain, as we always have to place duty above it. It keeps us from ending up aloof and self-righteous.”

 

“Master Qui-Gon believes the latter, I think. Even after that Xanatos person.”

 

“What makes you think that?”

 

“Well, he has always tried to do what he thinks is best for me, I suppose, and he didn’t have to. It cost him. And he loves you, there’s that.” Anakin added as an afterthought.

 

“Love is a very strong word for a Jedi, padawan Skywalker. Attachment is forbidden.”

 

“Do you want me to say he feels compassion for you? That sounds like irony.”

 

“Cheeky.” Obi-Wan ruffled boy’s hair.

 

“I think it’s time for you to sleep now, Ani. Obi-Wan also needs his rest.” Qui-Gon stood at the doorway, lap full of bedclothes he had conjured up from stars knew where. Anakin nodded obediently and closed his eyes. Obi-Wan took his time to reach and dim the bedside lamp, partly because movement caused a fresh wave of dizziness, partly because he was suddenly nervous. _How long have you been there? What did you hear?_

 

“Do you want me to put you under?” Qui-Gon asked softly, after they had somewhat awkwardly managed Obi-Wan back to the couch and Qui-Gon had created a small nest around him with pillows and blankets. Obi-Wan leaned backwards to the armrest.

 

“I’ll cope fine, master.”

 

“Of that, I have no doubt. I merely wanted to ensure.” And just like that, they were having a conversation that consisted of at least three different layers, like it was the way with Obi-Wan’s master. There was no way his master would evade this now, not if he had heard… Qui-Gon had hedged him earlier at the infirmary, before all the recent dramatics, and damn the man if he didn’t always choose his own battlegrounds. Obi-Wan definitely wasn’t ready for this, not when this tired and exposed.

 

Qui-Gon arranged himself in the meditation position next to the couch, and stared Obi-Wan intently in the eye. His hands rested on his lap. Even in the dimness of the room his eyes had that charged shade of blue of the mountain summer sky just before thunder. Then Qui-Gon bowed his head.

 

“You forgave me for being afraid, and my impetuous behavior because of that fear, my padawan. I’m humbled. However, what did you forgive yourself, after that blasted day in front of the Council? Or what should you have forgiven yourself?”

 

The Force had a sense of irony, that’s why this had to be the only occasion in all their years together when Obi-Wan couldn’t answer his master’s question and look him in the eyes at the same time. It was either one or the other. He closed his eyes, let his head fall back and felt himself in the Force, stretched thin, open and shallow on its surface. _At least this way I don’t have to see pity on his face._

 

“It wasn’t that you didn’t listen to me, or that you were at odds with the Council, or even that you tossed me to the Trials with no warning. It was that --- that you _wanted_ \--- I mean --- in all our years, master, especially after master Tahl ---  I’ve never seen you want anybody on your side that badly. You wanted Anakin so badly to become a knight, to be in the Order, to be yours to train and I --- I had to fight every step of the way. I should have released these feelings years ago and --- and still, _still_ \--- I would grant anything you want to you, master, gladly, if it is in my power.” _Way to go Kenobi, throw yourself into his lap next time, it couldn’t get any more obvious than this. You haven’t actually even answered your master’s direct question you blubbering excuse of a ---_

 

Obi-Wan’s inner rant paused mid-sentence when a calloused hand touched his cheek. The touch was cautious and felt ready to bolt at the slightest sign of discomfort, and Obi-Wan just didn’t have it in him anymore. He made a wordless, undignified sound, and leaned into the touch. The hold firmed.

 

“What I wanted for Anakin means compromising on factors I’ve only recently become aware of, but like you said to Ani, they are only an explanation, not a justification. So it’s all the same to let them be forgotten. My deeds and their consequences are my own making,” Qui-Gon’s voice had an odd, unheard quality on it, suffocated and grating.

 

“Whatever capacity I have left to connect, to feel compassion, to nurture, it’s all thanks to you. You were what I needed not once, not twice, but for months and years, dear one. Even when I _wanted_ nothing to do with it, you persisted. And that’s not even counting this latest stunt of yours. Don’t think for a second I’m not grateful and proud. I want to run through these halls and grab everybody by their robes and make them witness your incandescence.”

 

_Too much. Too much when I’m like this. I will tear and disperse and reveal._

 

“Master?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Please don’t run through the halls. I can’t follow you when I’m in this state, and then there will be nobody to distract them from the scene.”

 

A weak, reluctant chortle. “If you absolutely insist. I was pondering stretching my legs, I admit.”

 

“No sprinting until you’ve fully recovered. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. Dignified gliding to give lectures, that’s more up to your alley.”

 

“Why yes, healer Kenobi. Next thing I know you’ll be prescribing me to mind healers, gliding and all.”

 

“I might, if this weird master Jinn character, who displays clear signs of inappropriate personal pride, keeps appearing.”

 

“Oh, do shut up. We don’t take gratification from accomplishments that are the Force’s to shape and mold.” < _You knew, didn’t you? > _through the bond.

 

“Eloquent, master.” < _After a fashion. > _  

 

All the way during the light, forced bantering, it wasn’t really a kiss to inside of Qui-Gon’s wrist, where Obi-Wan’s lips felt the steady pulse, a tingling sensation. No, he had just turned his face against his master’s hand for support, to… to prevent lightheadedness, yes. And his master’s touch wasn’t really a caress, Qui-Gon was just… wiping sweat and sickness from his brows.

 

***

 

The revered master Mace Windu raked the sand.

 

It was never calm at the top of the southeast tower. The master created; the wind ran at his footsteps and obliterated, howling with glee. For Depa’s eyes he made an archaic picture as he leaned on the rake longer than himself, a large straw hat covering the bald head and shadowing most of his face. It was a lone figure far from the past, when a vagrant lifestyle was still a common choice for a Jedi.

 

Depa crossed her arms and resisted the urge to snort. Whenever her master felt sorry for himself - which wasn’t _that_ often, mind you - he turned to the past and its imagined ascetic glory. Well. Some things couldn’t be helped. She picked up a smaller rake and positioned herself next to her master.

 

Master and former padawan formed geometric, rigorous patterns side by side. Behind their backs, in the past, the wind played and toppled and ripped their pursuit for perfection apart.

 

“You’ll get sand in your eyes without a cover,” Mace uttered after a long time.

 

“I’m older and more experienced now. I’ll handle myself.” _Unlike certain other gentlebeings in this vast galaxy._

 

“I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

 

“True. We’re just raking the sand, master. For old times’ sake.” They have spent more hours up here in Depa’s earlier padawan years than she cared to count. She had been old, almost too old to join the Order when Mace Windu had liberated her and her sister from the depths of the slaver ship’s underbelly. Too old not to have clinging nightmares, adhering memories and negative emotions like honey-lured flies buzzing around her head.

 

The sand scratched, the wind bit. Depa suppressed a shiver and nudged her body to ignore the circumstances.  

 

“Yoda believes it’s a Force compulsion, set by the boy’s sensitive but untrained mother. For a master to see the potential, to claim, to protect, to be allured.”

 

“You don’t believe that?”

 

“It’s too sophisticated. Too elusive. She had help, at least.”

 

“And you’re thinking about going yourself? To investigate?”

 

“I…” The next line in the sand was slightly deeper and sharper than previous ones. “The Council hasn’t declared anything. But I thought I recognized...now that I knew where to look.” Depa knew this already; the long, dragging, pointless hours up in the spire, no conclusion and no consensus, not even after Jinn’s padawan had woken up. Jinn’s claim of the Sith on Tatooine remained exactly that, a claim, security tapes notwithstanding, until Kenobi was in a state to give a testimony. Even then, Depa knew, the Council’s decision would be touch-and-go.

 

And now she learned there was a suspicion about the earlier Dark Force use, again on Tatooine, again around the same bloodline. Depa wondered if the whole planet was covered in an ominous dark shroud straight out from the old holodrama.

 

“Whispers and decisions-not-made cast a shadow over my padawan-brāthn nonetheless. He’s nine, emerged to the Temple under catastrophic circumstances, whispers of Sith in his wake, masters injured and padawans in coma, and has been chosen by the Head of the Order. He’s already under scrutiny. Are you sure, master, that whatever he has done is worth of more fearmongering once they learn of your recent whereabouts?” Depa pondered aloud, keeping her tone dispassionate. What was it about that boy that got her acting all big-sisterly when she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body?

 

“Anakin might be a pawn. Or worse, he and his mother might have been used as bait, planted on our way. We’ve swallowed --- I have swallowed it whole.” The wind, and vaapad, rose for quick moment until Mace brought it under control again. “I --- I might have made a mistake by taking him in, claiming him. I may have endangered the Order, and I don’t yet understand how.” Dark eyes looked suddenly naked, a look Depa remembered only vaguely; she had been caught in blasterfire on a planet succumbing to a civil war. She had fought for her life in the bacta for a week.

 

“Even if we take master Jinn’s words and prophecies with a grain of salt, the question haunts me: is it possible for the Dark side to manipulate the shatterpoint itself through individuals, across several years, not just possible outcomes? If it is, the power to achieve that points…” Depa’s master closed his eyes. “I had to do it. I had to get this under control first. Anakin doesn’t know. I can’t impose this on him. Any more than he has already been.”

 

“Had to do what? Go traipsing all over the galaxy on a Sith hunt, a Sith who may or may not have influenced the child of your and master Jinn’s choosing?” Depa could feel how her words pricked like the sand in wind. “Anakin is _nine_ , master, and do I really have to remind you of master’s utmost responsibility? You can’t take him on undercover missions involving enemies we thought gone eons ago, even if we don’t consider the boy’s circumstances! And if you think of leaving him behind, I’m going to smack you around the ears.”

 

“Somebody has to go! Who do you think I should have sent on a mission like this, to a danger like this, when the Council isn’t even prepared to announce the enemy’s existence? The enemy we thought vanquished, and by emerging, almost destroyed one of our most capable field teams?”

 

They were such old and dusty things, things Depa had thought she had examined carefully and then put on the shelf in her mind, only to look at, never to use again. “If you insist on taking former slaves as your padawans, you’d do well to remember additional...issues, master. To abandon the boy so soon, and without explanation, for an indeterminately long mission, would not go well. Kriff’s sake, remember Sar. The boy can’t let go of the attachment unless he knows the subject is safe.”

 

The raking had suddenly lost its charm for Depa. She put the rake down and deliberately chose to place her footprints over her oldest creation before the wind would finish its obliteration.

 

“Give me two weeks,” she said and halted halfway to the door. “The trail is already as cold as it gets, years old, and the mother’s mind probably confounded. We need to talk circles around the Council, make them convinced discretion is their own idea. Kenobi needs more rest or Jinn won’t agree. It has to be him, fully restored or not. He’s the only one who truly understands what we are up against, excluding Kenobi, and Kenobi is a new-born knight and has weeks, if not months, of recovery ahead of him.” Her face felt numb in the wind. “Let Anakin write to her. Let him send her a holo. Let me worry about costs and funding of the rest of this mission.”

 

She was almost at the door when her master’s voice carried to him. “You wouldn’t reach my ears anyway.”           

 

*******

 

Qui-Gon trampled his trembling with a practised ease of a Jedi master after his padawan fell asleep nuzzling - there really was no other word to it, Force help him - his hand. Even after Obi-Wan’s breath had deepened and his lips had fallen slightly open, he remained a long while, head bowed and fingers stroking his padawan’s forehead.  

 

_No touching without purpose. For Living Force encourages touch, and through touch, sentiment, have always been your stumbling blocks,_ his thoughts - which sounded suspiciously like Dooku this time around -  whispered to him later, as he laid awake in his cool sheets. His body refused to cooperate; it seemed to believe there was a looming danger in the shadows of his own blasted quarters. He pricked his ears up to detect sounds of a disturbed breath pattern in the living room.   

 

_It serves a purpose more profound than you could possibly understand. Kriff you, and kriff practised ease too,_ he thought and startled by his own viciousness.

 

_You’re taking advantage._

 

_Kriff you. He looks after himself better than I do._

 

_What happened to the noble not-imposing-yourself-on-him-policy, hmm?_

 

**_Kriff_ ** _you. He needed to hear all that. He deserves it._

 

_You needed it more._

 

On and on and on until he was ready to go down to the training salles and punch the living daylights out of some practice droid. It took the better half of the night to release it all to the Force. He was a master. This was unacceptable.

 

He was a _master_.

 

Obi-Wan’s master. He couldn’t go to him in any circumstances.

 

On rare occasions, the Code was the durasteel wall even Qui-Gon Jinn couldn’t get over, under, past, or blast through.

 

It wasn’t his padawan’s responsibility to be what he _needed_ over and over again, no matter where his heart had wandered **.**

 

*******

 

In the small hours of the morning, he sensed Obi-Wan stirring. Qui-Gon listened to him tottering to the fresher, where he dwelled longer than was good for Qui-Gon’s peace of mind, then waddled back to the living room just as Qui-Gon was ready to get up and offer his help. The uneven steps didn’t head straight back to the couch, however, but stopped behind his half-closed door for a short while. He guessed that Obi-Wan was checking his breathing, the thrumming bond somehow not enough to reassure.

 

The first grey light of morning brought him up from the light trance he usually reserved for more unsafe sleeping conditions. He snuck to the front door, received Ne’s medical droid and its packages, and a note from Ne that she would schedule her morning checkup in time for master Jinn’s lecture. Qui-Gon placed an order for breakfast for his padawan for the next month.

 

Obi-Wan was still dead to the world when he tiptoed past the couch, looking clammy and feverish, drooling on his pillow. The sheer vulnerability of his padawan’s state almost stopped him in his tracks, and Qui-Gon felt unbalanced when he bent over Anakin and shook the boy’s shoulder. Anakin muttered something obscene in Huttese that a child shouldn’t understand, and then Qui-Gon saw the memory of yesterday’s events sweeping over his scrunched face.

 

“You have morning classes,” Qui-Gon reminded quietly.

 

Anakin almost uttered “What’s the point?”, but a lift of an eyebrow and the words died on his mouth.

 

It pleased him to notice the boy studied the delivered medical package on the kitchen table with care, then crept to the living room’s caf table with the right dosage and a glass of water, setting them in Obi-Wan’s reach.

 

They were sipping their morning beverages - northern hemisphere blend of sapir for Qui-Gon and eye watering caf for Anakin, bless the child - as the doorbell dinged. Obi-Wan twitched but slumbered on. Anakin rose, eager to compensate for his earlier lapse.

 

“I’ll leave it in the living room too. I hope they remembered the heat packs,” he whispered.

 

Qui-Gon heard the front door opening the second time, Anakin’s bright greeting and service bot’s mechanical answer. Then:

 

“Morning padawan.”

 

He was on his feet and in the entryway as soon as the voice registered. Anakin was clutching the delivery package like a knight’s shield from some old Corellian holo tale. Mace Windu looked like he had swallowed the same knight’s lance.

 

“You should come with me.” Not a request, not a direct command either. Mace’s tone was flat.

 

Anakin’s eyes flashed, and for a moment Qui-Gon thought the boy would refuse outright.

 

“A moment,” Anakin replied tightly, and backed past Qui-Gon to the living room.

 

_I’ll explain later,_ Mace’s look said.

 

_You’d better,_ Qui-Gon’s look answered. He was being hypocritical and found out he didn’t care.

 

Anakin came back, said a quiet goodbye, donned his boots and cloak, and walked out of the apartment, facing his master with more dignity than should be reasonable for a nine-year-old. The door closed. Qui-Gon pinched his nose, left a flimsi note next to Obi-Wan’s breakfast tray and resigned himself to wait for healer Onossa, who arrived late, looking harried. He found himself walking down to the morning bustle with only the foggiest memory of what his morning lecture was supposed to demonstrate.

 

***

 

When Qui-Gon returned, mind as curiously blank about the course of his lecture as it had been earlier in the morning, despite the fact that he _had_ given his presentation to a full auditorium, he found the Jinn-Kenobi residence slightly altered. It took a second for him to realize that the blinds had been thrown totally open the first time in weeks, and the whole apartment was bathed in light. The double doors to the balcony also stood wide open. The vernal breeze carried a faint chiming. Obi-Wan had been abashed to present the askew wind chimes after the mandatory handwork meditation course when he was fourteen.

 

The young artisan himself had dragged the mediation cushion to the balcony; that, and threadbare quilt on his shoulders, were the only admissions of malady. The short interval between Coruscant’s morning and afternoon traffic jams would have been invisible to the inexperienced eye.

 

Obi-Wan acknowledged him in the Force as Qui-Gon pulled off his boots and folded himself next to his padawan, but he didn’t rouse from the trance. Qui-Gon closed his eyes and matched their breathing.

 

The Force welcomed him. It was easy to track his apprentice down from the patterns and currents: he shone, one particle in all-encompassing tapestry, nothing but one weave and yet distinguished, cognizant.

 

Obi-Wan was rebuilding, crafting. He had been embarrassed of his hands’ work as a child, but at present, Qui-Gon stood in awe and encouragement when his padawan remade. The Force spun and eddied and, by a firm, asking mind, stabilized and consolidated, layer after complicated layer, iron clad and cool to Qui-Gon’s Force-sense. The fever and nausea were tightly contained, placed on the back burner. What shone through was the determination to wrench back control of one’s surroundings, to feel the sun and outside air on one’s face, no matter how artificial. To draw consolation from the incessant and immovable Light, outside and inside, no matter how it throbbed.

 

Afterwards, they rested together in the Force, a form of companionship both he and the young Jedi beside him - for Obi-Wan parted his brand new shields, tested their resilience and shared the sentiment - had worried was lost to them for good. When Qui-Gon opened his eyes to the afternoon hubbub, Obi-Wan had turned his still gaunt face towards the sun. Qui-Gon touched his shoulder lightly, ordering rest, medicine and perhaps a healing trance if the master deemed the rebuilding solid enough. Things might finally return to their version of normalcy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If wishes were horses...
> 
>  
> 
> (Sidenote about Anakin: they still dont understand what's going on, and it will stay that way for a while, because so much knowledge (of the Sith, of the Dark, of the prophecies) is lost by now. And, because of the very nature of the Order, their approach - especially Mace's, but Yoda's too - is one- dimensional.)


	3. Chapter 3

His master had been having nightmares for as long as Anakin had been his padawan (so, several weeks at least). He didn’t want Anakin to know. The dream trickled over to him nonetheless, and it terrified him. A colorless, shapeless void, screaming with the loss of tens of thousand lives, each loss sucking light out of the galaxy like a miniature black hole. Even the mere echo of the nightly maelstrom woke Anakin several times, sending him wailing soundlessly into his pillow.

 

No wonder his master had tried to claw that...thing out of his head, before they first met.

 

He quickly learned to shut up about sharing dreams among other junior padawans, like he had learned not to bring up how they wasted food, or how meditation was so difficult. None of them seemed to share that sort of connection with their masters, who mostly remained enigmas to them, revealing only the things they wanted their apprentices to see. If you listened to other padawans, you would imagine their masters didn’t have weaknesses. Obviously, to them, adults were still infallible.

 

Anakin feared he was somehow breaking past his master’s defences the same way he had Obi-Wan’s when he was vulnerable.

 

_It isn’t possible_ , he reminded himself. Master Windu is a revered master. It was hubris to even think such a thing possible.

 

Here in this moment, his master looked like he did after an especially bad round of night terrors. Those mornings, they both shuffled around their tiny kitchen, avoiding each other’s eyes, and Anakin brewed the caf extra bitter. That look, more than anything else, more than master Mace’s order or master Qui-Gon’s worry, had convinced Anakin that he should go with his master and let him explain.

 

Master Mace didn’t take him to the Gardens. They didn’t go to the meditation chambers or the Archives or their apartment. They ended up to a small, windowless room deep at Temple’s lower levels. It looked like someone’s private, neglected workshop; tools, scattered wires and uncompleted metalworks gave an air of seeming chaos that hid a private order.

 

“Pick one,” Anakin’s master instructed gruffly. “You concentrate better when your hands have something to work on. Adi won’t mind.”

 

Anakin gulped and picked a small clusterfuck of circuits, his hands already working with a mind of their own, twiddling and trying to get the sense of the piece. “What needs my concentration?” he asked, being really polite, but leaving ‘master’ unaddressed on purpose. He saw a small, irritated tic on master Mace’s jaw and knew he shouldn’t feel satisfied but he did, just a little.

 

“I have been behaving in a way that seems odd to you,” the master started. “Since you haven’t had the chance to learn this through the years, let me assure you this one time that as your master, I always act with your best interests at heart, and you have to trust that from now on, even though you don’t see the reasons why I’m doing something at the present moment.”

 

“It hurt. Terribly much,” Anakin interjected quietly. That seemed to surprise master Mace for some reason.

 

“Hurt? Padawan, you’re exaggerating.”

 

“Am not. Ask master Qui-Gon. Ask Obi-Wan.”

 

There was a storm brewing on his masters forehead once again, and somehow he had mucked up already, but he wasn’t a _liar,_ or some delicate, sloshy waterdweller who couldn’t handle a little discomfort.

 

“Open the bond for me,” master Mace ordered. Anakin wanted to flinch, wanted to refuse. But he wanted to be a Jedi, didn’t he? Jedi couldn’t act like waterdwellers either.

If his master noticed his reluctance, he chose to ignore it. Anakin took a deep breath and unfurled a tight ball he had created around the bruise on his side of the bond. It still felt like someone had slammed a heavy door on his fingers.

 

Master Mace’s eyes widened. “This isn’t --” he began, probing further, then pinched his nose. Anakin gritted his teeth and endured. The touch of his master’s mind against his gentled.

 

“Anakin. You’re latching on. That’s why me shielding the bond from you hurt you. Loosen up.” The warmth of his master was suddenly back, both in the outside world and in the Force, like Anakin was standing too close to the fireplace.

 

“I don’t understand. Master.” Maybe he did, he just didn’t want to admit it. Maybe this had something to do with the shared dreams.

 

Master Mace seemed to size him up.

 

“It might be your considerable raw power - “ _This is about the Chosen One stuff, isn’t it? Only, master Mace never talks about it, just master Qui-Gon._ “- or, like Depa recently reminded me, your earlier life experiences. In any case, your Force binds itself too tightly around those important to you. This isn’t the Outer Rim. People close to you aren’t going to vanish overnight. You don’t have to latch onto them.”

 

_Sold-and-gone, that’s what it’s called, master._ Anakin’s hands spun.  

 

His master seemed to hear his thought and his eyes softened a fraction. “This is an important lesson for you about attachment. I want you to prepare yourself for the release. We will meditate on this together. I have to leave you behind at the Temple for a while. This will be your most difficult lesson yet. I will prepare you. We will strengthen your mind. I will come back.”

 

Master Mace was… leaving? He was to stay behind? And what was this talk about his mind? His mind was already too strong and all over the place lately, if you asked Anakin. It caused nothing but trouble for him.

 

His master was leaving him behind. It was unacceptable. But he had time to convince him otherwise, if he understood correctly, and he needed more information to start plotting.

 

“Why are you going, master? And where, if I may ask?” he asked timidly.

 

Master Mace’s eyes flashed. “I’m going to root out this threat to the Order once and for all.”

 

Anakin knew there was much his master wasn’t explaining to him - his master spoke as vaguely as any adult keeping secrets, and the contrast was even starker than usual because he was normally so frank. Then, master Mace’s next words wiped everything else from his mind.

 

“You may want to start thinking about what to record for your mother,” his master smiled.

 

“You’re - you’re going to meet Mom? You’re going to Tatooine? Without me?” he whispered. His fingers stopped and the bundle of wires rolled to floor, unnoticed.

 

Master Mace’s smiled turned wistful. “Your lesson begins now, padawan.”

     

***

 

The healing was, if possible, even more exhausting than being awake. More than that, it was an excruciatingly unhurried endeavor for somebody who was, for starters, way too used to the bacta’s miracle solutions. In the same vein, he seemed to be way too used to the sanctuary of moving meditations of kata as another miracle solution.

 

Obi-Wan’s low fever broke on the second day after his audacious adventure to the balcony. He had sunk into a heavy healing trance aided by Qui-Gon, and emerged almost two cycles later to find the older man hovering over him, bearing a distinct resemblance to a mother hen as Obi-Wan blithely informed him. Next to his master stood healer Onossa, looking at once relieved and irritated.

 

“How do you feel, padawan Kenobi? Eyes up here, follow the light.”

 

“I -- uh, I’m _fine,_ no needles! I think I could actually… eat? Something?”

 

Qui-Gon’s eyes crinkled and he turned to the kitchen.

 

“Nausea lessened, then? What about nightmares?” Onossa asked.

 

Obi-Wan frowned, and shooed the enthusiastic medical droid away from the couch.

 

“Use the Force on my staff once again, Kenobi, and you’ll get all your overdue vaccinations in a one go. With a needle made for Wookies.”  

 

A definite waft of amusement in the Force floated from the kitchen.

 

“I thi -- ouch -- I think it’s over. I feel lightheaded here, like you would expect after a fever, but… not in the Force. Not so much. And I don’t remember my dreams.”

 

“Hmph. We need a sample of your midichlorians to determine the exact state of your recovery.”

 

“Is --- Is that nerf beef broth I smell, master?”

 

“Well yes, my weakling spring chicken. Endure the droid first with your usual Jedi stoicism.”

 

That episode had been two weeks ago. Anakin had all but vanished from the planet’s surface while he was in his trance, but Qui-Gon remained convinced that the boy was alright. There wasn’t much Obi-Wan could do in this state, anyway.

 

By now, he had daringly ventured to the kitchen and back to the couch, to the fresher and back to the couch, to the balcony and back to the couch, until he was sure he had carved new pathways into their quarter’s floor. He had defied the forces of nature and meditated on his knees, sipped so much broth he was sure his body was developing an allergy to the boiled vegetables, and found time for his teenage fascinations with war history and comparative ethnology. He fell asleep, datapad on his face, and found it on the caf table three hours later. Neither of them mentioned it.

 

Five days, healer Onossa dangled the hope in front of his nose, five days and he might get permission for a daredevil exploit to the actual gardens, and maybe, just maybe, dip carefully into a tardy open-hand kata.

 

What jarred him was the disjointed familiarity of it all. It could have been their normal, rare respite from the gruelling mission roster, and all the things he associated with it: half-drunk teacups, wandering around in frayed, old undertunics. Naps in the afternoon sun (instigated by nausea drugs at this instance), fitful conversations half through the bond, half in the physical realm about this or that tidbit they came across in their readings.

 

And yet, they were off-kilter. Well, the nightmares had dwindled to the last, stubborn one: there was no heartbeat, the chest didn’t rise and fall, but bloomed a crimson flower, which overflowed under his hands. Obi-Wan woke choking at least once, sometimes twice each night, impelling his own frantic heartbeat down in vain, before giving up and sneaking to his master’s door, listening and trying to convince himself he could trust his own senses. Sometimes it took mere minutes; on especially bad nights, he spent an hour on the floor, back against the solid door.

 

His master wasn’t sleeping either, he noticed. Obi-Wan could tell the difference between his master’s sleeping breathing (and whistling through his nose) and his respiration in a trance, even behind the closed door. Most nights, the pattern was the latter one.

 

There was a meaningful heaviness in their actions that hadn’t been there before. On the contrary, these wordless deeds had been so light precisely because it wasn’t the Jedi way to put into words, to acknowledge sentiments that concealed themselves behind them. Qui-Gon’s words from their first night back home simmered just below the surface, flavouring everything. Sometimes the words made him so light he thought he could fly like in ataru. Sometimes they spun his head until he ended up retching over the sink.  

 

There were two (not one, but two) steaming cups of tea waiting at the breakfast table; their hands brushed each other’s with groggy carelessness when reaching them, and the electric jolt in the Force was intense enough to wake them properly.

 

Now, when Qui-Gon quietly announced that Obi-Wan’s bath was ready (for naturally his master had noticed the dull ache and soreness in his muscles from the extended period of forced immobility), Obi-Wan inexplicably blushed. It didn’t make any sense. They had been living in each other’s pockets for almost a decade, and their upbringing and means of travel effectively rooted out prudishness from a young age.

 

Now, his master sat down on the mediation mat and Obi-Wan brushed through the silvering cascade of hair, a rare task that before had been all about efficiency and courtesy of a padawan, and time slowed down, molasses-thick. Until Obi-Wan suddenly realized that he was combing individual locks through his fingers with tenderness. He put the comb down abruptly, an apology ready on his lips for his stalling, except that his master kept his eyes closed and said “Thank you, dear one.” The still new and rare term of endearment alone would have been enough to force all the air out of the room.

 

Now, when Qui-Gon left the quarters, there was a tightness around his eyes. Now, in his master’s absence, Obi-Wan felt a welcomed reprieve and, simultaneously, restlessness. Something overripe was on the verge of splitting, yet, his was a compulsion to pluck at their bond at regular intervals, like poking at a sore tooth with his tongue (it was there, it _existed_ ). He resisted, most of the time, but gave in often enough to know it must irritate Qui-Gon. And yet, in this moment, in this now, his master didn’t mention it, much less reprimand him.

 

The official summons of his Knighting evaluation, and a set of white robes, arrived on  one such divided, solitary afternoon. He knew he should be elated: here, after all the misadventures and times he had fallen short, was the proof that he was capable.

 

His mind was curiously blank.

 

He knew what he had to do next, though. The Council would demand a full account from him before proclamation. He would have to go deep this time, deeper than he had tried since the… phenomenon. He had to ensure the black thing, his innermost hiding and downfall, was truly pierced and gone, his being made of Light once again.

 

_I’ve accepted these feelings, that I can’t release them, this frailty. I haven’t acted upon them. I have forgiven. It has no control over me. There is no passion ruling over me, there is peace in the Force._

 

_There is supposed to be peace._

 

***

 

The bond went quiet after two weeks of them sidestepping each other.

 

Qui-Gon couldn’t sense his padawan in the Force, among the susurrating hustle and bustle that was the Temple.

 

A strange sense of grounding, like before the battle, settled over him after all the skittish orbiting. His mind purged itself of irrelevancies: his latest meeting with Mace and its turbulent tidings, his worry for Anakin, students’ coursework piling on his desk, waiting for final grading.

 

He ran through the Temple, Force-speed, paying no heed to surprised onlookers, his mind assessing and ready, his body alert as it had been nightly before this, like it had known something like this would happen all along.

 

Their quarters, hit on the control panel, automatic door wrenched open as it was stalling, looking for the source of trouble, other hand hovering on saber’s hilt, other one searching for the emergency adrenaline ampule Ne had left behind, eyes evaluating the situation... only to fall onto his padawan. Far down in meditation, breathing sluggish and even, sunken so deep in himself that his shields had hidden him from Qui-Gon.

 

Disturbed by his master’s precipitous charge, Obi-Wan rose too quickly, hiccupped and had a coughing fit. Qui-Gon felt all energy draining from his body. He stumbled backwards and into the living room wall.

 

“What the hells,master?!” his padawan glowered at him from the floor, one cuff dampened. He clearly saw something on Qui-Gon’s face, because his look shifted to worry. “Has something happened? Are we needed?”

 

“No,” Qui-Gon waved his hand feebly and then covered his face. It was the only thing to do because he couldn’t even control his expressions.

 

He hadn’t been thinking at all in the moment, only reacting.

 

“You disappeared from the Force. I thought something had happened.”

 

He could sense how his apprentice resisted the urge to make clucking sounds. “Meditation, the Jedi’s bread and butter, didn’t occur to you?” came the amused answer.

 

“No. No, I’ve been on my on my toes for days. I thought something must be coming.”

 

Obi-Wan got up from the floor in one seamless, though careful, move. “And why would you think that, master? I have sensed nothing in the Force. No foreboding, no warning. I’ve been improving steadily.” His tone was guileless, but his shoulders were taut.

 

Qui-Gon dropped his hand and smiled in a way he meant to be reassuring, but somehow it twisted and changed to wry.

 

“When a master fails in his paramount duty to keep his padawan safe and whole, constant vigilance doesn’t sound so bad after,” he tried to quip, tried to take a well-traveled road as always.

 

Somehow it was a wrong thing to say. Obi-Wan’s ever-changeable eyes narrowed, likewise did his focus. “I’ve told you a dozen times, I _forgive_ you! There’s no need to lose control -”

 

And maybe it was the fortnight's insomnia that made him answer the way he did.

 

“Stop forgiving me, Obi-Wan! I prohibit you from indulging that penance!” he snapped.

 

Narrowed eyes shifted to wintry grey.

 

“Indulging? I’ll stop when you stop hoarding blame from every ever-rigid responsibility you set on your own shoulders!”

 

Qui-Gon moved from the wall and transferred his weight evenly between both legs. “It was my duty to protect -”

 

“Then stop hoarding pathetic lifeforms to be protected!”

 

“Do _not_ interrupt me!”

 

“Stop it, if you just cast them aside when convenient!” The Force crackled and hissed. Qui-Gon took a deep breath.

 

“I did what Force bid me to do. It was right, but it hurt you. I don’t expect or require you to forgive me for a paradox like that.” He realized as soon as he uttered the words that his padawan impression was that he was patronized instead of placated. Obi-Wan drew his dignity around himself like a tightened sash. The Force calmed to down to an impermeable serenity.

 

“You’re not under oath to protect me in your paradoxically complicated way I’m surely too dimwitted to understand, much less to deal with and forgive. Not much longer anyway.” The words were clipped and crisp, the flip of the datapad across the room just a tad too energetic. Qui-Gon caught it all the same.

 

He had to read simple lines several times before he understood. “Tomorrow evening?” His throat felt dry.

 

Obi-Wan huffed and swung his braid over his shoulder. “The hearing, yes. I think our mission report will be one of the most delayed in the Order’s recent history. Very maverick of us.” Obi-Wan’s voice was flimsi-dry, the Force still a calm texture, smooth, wrinkless.

 

“They will want to hear your side mostly, I expect. Padawan. I’m glad.”

 

His padawan bowed. “Thank you, master. You should take into consideration that the proclamation and ceremony are to be conducted tomorrow morning. They have all night to regret their decision.”

 

“I very much doubt that.”

 

“Last time we stood before them must have left some lingering questions.” The younger man’s tone remained stubbornly impersonal, silver-slippery, like he was discussing a hypothetical practise case. “I didn’t take it very well.”

 

_In any other standard than the blasted Council’s, you were exemplary. I just didn’t pay attention,_ Qui-Gon thought.

 

“They will count it as part of my nonconformist behavior as always.”

 

“Padawan should be loyal to their masters.”

 

Qui-Gon resisted an impulse to pinch his nose, or even better, to clutch his padawan by the shoulders and make the young man see.

 

“Your loyalty should belong to the Force, as it did at that moment. It was telling you something else about the situation than it was compelling me to do.” An image rose from the past, dimmed by distance, but still painted with stark brushes of dread and disbelief.

 

“Are we forever standing at that mine in Bandomeer? Are we still repeating that, you preparing to throw yourself in the harm’s way for me, there and in the Council’s chamber, in Theed, over and over again?” Qui-Gon asked.

 

He could see how Obi-Wan stiffened. They had avoided discussing Naboo with great care.

 

“If I have failed to teach you that the servitude doesn’t mean intentionally seeking self-sacrifice, then I have truly failed you. And that is something you shouldn’t forgive me,” Qui-Gon’s voice softened the longer he made it into his impromptu speech.

 

Finally, some emotion colored his padawan’s voice. “You’re wrong to think of me as a reckless child, master. I have grown actually to be more perspective than that. For the hundredth time, I understand why you did it. I don’t like your method - it was cruel and distrusting -  but you had backed yourself into a corner. An unnecessary and dangerous corner, I thought at the time, but we have a decade together. If you say I’m ready, then I must be ready. You - you even asked - when you were _dying_ , you trusted that I had it in me to overcome all the obstacles you yourself couldn’t find the way past.”

 

His unwavering padawan.

 

Some emotion flushed also his padawan’s cheeks, his eyes over-bright, challenging Qui-Gon.

 

“You failed, master. You backed yourself into a corner and hurt me because of your blasted convictions, because you couldn’t bother to consider nothing but the present moment. After a decade, I kriffing see through you. But you had faith in me, to correct your fail. So, I refuse to fail. And I damn well refuse to be one of your failures that you carry around like some sort of mantle of war honors you never, ever put down unless someone _makes_ you. So you’re going to accept my forgiveness and deal instead of walking, instead of letting this fester between us.”

 

The same, unnamed emotion that colored his padawan’s cheeks also suffocated Qui-Gon. He couldn’t make his throat work, not even if threatened by a blaster. He reached for the bond and made it resonate with his feelings, in disarray, inelegantly: < _Far wiser man. For to accept your forgiveness, I must first say: I’m so sorry. > _

 

Obi-Wan’s eyes shifted again and studied the floor. The grey made room for a smoky green.

 

_ <I forgive you.> _

 

“I can’t convince you the Theed was not Bandomeer all over again. Not yet. But I assure you, it was not,” his padawan whispered.

 

_He sees so much. He must soon realize the truth about your heart, old man._

 

Qui-Gon erected his shields with haste.

 

_Not ahead of his Knighting! Not ahead of the hearing!_ He swallowed and forced moisture back into his mouth.

 

“Enough. I’m distracting you on the eve of your evaluation. Rest assured, padawan, we will work through this. Afterwards.”

 

Obi-Wan blinked rapidly at the shut bond. Corners of his eyes twitched minutely; it was all it took to wring the control back. He bowed once more. “I trust your affirmation in this matter, master. If you don’t mind, I would like to continue my preparation, although my Trial is past me, according to the Council.”

 

“Of course. Need I remind you that a fast and a vigil are to be treated carefully in your condition?”

 

“I bear my limitations in mind.” Obi-Wan retreated to his room, which had stood unused for the last fortnight. The Force shimmered in his wake. The lock clicked softly.

 

Qui-Gon stood in the living room, feeling adrift.

 

Then he cursed. Mace had _known,_ the bastard. He - or Yoda, or the whole Council - had scheduled this very carefully indeed. They had plans.  

 

***

 

“... Thus I was able to vanquish the Dark creature who called himself Maul. I’m joining my master’s assumption, based on creature’s fighting style and powers, that we are dealing with something more than a mere dark side user, but more an ancient enemy of the Jedi.” The padawan bowed at the end of his account of the course of the fateful battle, and retreated back to the Chamber’s middle floor circle. Rays of the setting sun, filtered through the large stained-transparisteel windows, crowned his hair in bronze and magenta. His Force presence remained serene, but his eyes looked a little distant. He was outside of his and his master’s quarters for the first time in weeks, the healer’s report said. Behind him, in shadows, the master dwelled, hooded and exceptionally quiet.

 

His opinion of the Siths’ return caused a short whisper in the Force among the Councilors. Depa waited.  

 

“The medical team tells us you have been suffering the severe case of midi-chlorian burnout. Their latest report indicates, though, that you are steadily recovering. Kindly tell us about the circumstances that led you to use the Force in such a wasting and potentially self-sacrificing way,” Depa prompted after the whispering quiet down. _Vergence. A forced vergence._ The words weren’t uttered, but it didn’t really matter. In the corner of her eye, she could see master Mundi’s forefinger twitch imperceptibly. Master Yoda had looked almost asleep during the battle report, but now his half-closed eyes opened.

 

“The _circumstances,_ ” there was just the barest hint of displeasure in the padawan’s cultured voice, caused by Depa’s choice of words, “were dire. My master was critically injured. The battle raged on around us, on and off-planet. I knew no help would reach us in time, for my master had ushered the civilians out of the alleged Sith’s way before we entered the complex. He - “ A pause, no longer than a measured intake of breath. “His wound was fatal, I sensed it when I hurried to his side. He spoke a few words, and I felt the Force rise and meet him. I had to do everything I could. For a long time, my memory remained clouded; the next events are still hazy.”

 

The master standing in shadows was such a bleak spot in the Force, it all but beckoning attention.

 

“I presume, based on my fragmented memories and what the healers have told me about my injuries, that I wrestled with the Dark side, for I was feeling desperation, sorrow and anger. It tried to overcome me. I...somehow forged them together, forced Light and Dark to work together. I think it might have been vaapad in its most crudest, the most primal form.” The padawan shoot an unsure glance to master Windu, who remained expressionless.

 

“My...well, a creation, an instrument, it demanded an exchange. It would take energy from me, because I refused to direct it outward, and give it to the heartbeat. My master’s heartbeat. The Dark seethed, I remember that, because I used it but it couldn’t take me or fill me. I’m deeply sorry, masters, but I can’t tell you the exact timeframe of this struggle. I have no memory of the rescue team’s arrival.” The padawan slumped the tiniest bit, like he was disappointed in himself because his memory failed to serve him. The faint rustling echoed from the shadows and died.

 

Master Windu was frowning. “You claim that you bent Dark to your aide for a long time, much longer than the most basic vaapad exercise takes, which is all you’ve studied about the matter. Furthermore, you claim you used this amalgamation for refusing to let someone go into the Force. What makes you so sure that Dark didn’t succeed in its machinations?”

 

The padawan dropped on one knee and bowed his head. The dancing copper vanished  among the sand. “I’m ready for anything the Council suggests to dispel the doubts. I’ve meditated on this as long as my condition has allowed me.”

 

Master Yoda hopped down from his seat. “Threatened, the lineage is,” the ancient master declared. “Claiming responsibility of evaluation, I am. Full access to your psyche, candidate, I must ask, now that recovered enough, the report deems you. Precondition for Knightining, this is. Precondition for announcement of padawan Kenobi’s Trial on Naboo, this is. Master Tiin, stand witness, will you.” The Iktotchi master nodded and raised from his seat.

 

The padawan nodded thoughtfully. “I believe this will satisfy the Council’s questions about the matter. My shields are newly-constructed due to my persisting illness, but I gained control almost two weeks ago.”

 

_What about your own lingering questions?_ Depa thought. She could see in the corner of his eye how masters Rancisis and Poof flicked an expectant glance to the shadows. The master, however, didn’t raise any objection. She sensed Adi straightening her spine, and farther, her master’s answering acknowledgement.   

 

“Unravel your shields for me, candidate Kenobi,” the ancient troll commanded and approached the kneeling padawan, who closed his eyes. Yoda stopped directly in front of his grandpadawan, raised one, long-clawed finger, and rested it in the middle of the candidate’s forehead. Yoda hummed to himself, unfolded his ears and closed his eyes. The quiet Iktotchi master towered over them.

 

For a while, nothing happened. Then, the candidate’s breathing became labored. He leaned away from the grandmaster’s touch, but seemingly couldn’t break contact. Yoda tutted, and candidate stilled, although he had broken out in a sweat. His breathing was loud in the room, and grew more laboured every passing moment.

 

In the shadows, the master shuffled.

 

“Done, it is,” master Yoda pronounced, opening his eyes and blinking slowly. As his finger left candidate's forehead, Kenobi slumped forward and would have fallen flat on his face if master Tiin hadn’t catched him in time. “The procedure was correct,” the Iktotchi confirmed. “Master Jinn, please come forward and help Kenobi recuperate. I’m afraid master Yoda didn’t have time to be particularly kind with him. He should be out of it in minutes.”

 

The master bowed and hurried next to the young man. Master Tiin surrendered his place. Kenobi’s face was slack with mental shock; his mouth hung slightly open and his eyes were empty and unfocused.

 

“As Trial, Naboo and the battle are recognized. Victorious, the Trial was, it is recognized. The night of contemplation can now begin. The proclamation and greeting of the new knight are to be conducted the following morning, should the Council reach unanimity,” Depa’s master announced. Master Yoda was back to his seat, resting his hands heavily on his stick, eyes diminished to weary slits.      

 

“Take care, master Jinn, that your padawan bounces back if he wishes to fast and keep the traditional vigil,” master Windu advised, ending the ritual speech. “The Council gathers. You’re dismissed for now.”

 

The twosome bowed, the elder graciously, the younger stumbling back to his feet, and retreated. The candidate relied heavily on his master. Depa released a long expiration and rearranged her headspace out from the detachment the ritual demanded.

 

***

 

“It may prove... imprudent. Uneconomical, considering that Kenobi’s Trial was more severe than this Order has seen in several hundred years,” Adi spoke softly.

 

“Yes well, if you look up ‘Jedi life’ in the dictionary, you’ll find it under the subsection ‘unnecessarily uneconomical’”, master Piell exclaimed loftily. Masters Rancisis and Poof looked appalled while adjusting their cloaks; Depa’s master just looked extremely long-suffering. Depa trampled her desire to roll her eyes.

 

The room was divided into sections, discussions keyed low. Masters Yoda, Tiin and Mundi stood by the window. The hump on Yoda’s back was more prominent than usual. Ki-Adi stroked his beard. Under Depa’s watchful eye (and she was sure Adi noticed, though she kept their own conversation going), her master joined the window group. Depa strained her ears.

 

“There is no set time for the Trial,” Ki-Adi stated slowly. “We set them up as a final evaluation, this is true, but in truth, the Force determines these happenstances during all our lives, padawans, knights and masters alike. To walk in the Light is to remain vigilant and mindful at all times.”

 

“The Trial is coming for them both, and I don’t think we can help it,” Mace concluded carefully.

 

Yoda harrumphed. “Doormats of the Force, we are not. Guides our minds, our decisions, it does, not guiding empty vessels. If you don’t like our decision, master Windu, externalize it to the Force, you shouldn’t. An educated decision, this Council must make. Forgiving of plunderings, attachment, the Dark is not.”

 

Depa could read the signs that his master was worrying over something: he clenched his jaw too tightly. Tiin and Yoda shared a long look.

 

“Knight of the Order, young Kenobi will be,” Yoda raised his creaky voice. “My access and master Tiin’s witnessing, truthful they provided. Testifying for the return of the Sith, they both are. Proceed with caution, we must.” This caused a low murmur, but no opposing voices were raised. Yoda spoke over the noise. “Revealed something else, it also did. Another Trial for them, for master and knight, we should declare. Already, it has begun.”

 

The gabble rose at the wake of grandmaster’s speech, but Depa knew it was all semantics and details from there. She could feel the wave of empathy that rose from Adi and was released to the Force. Depa tightened her own shields and took strict hold of her emotions. She had been expecting something like this, yes, but she couldn’t help but feel they had robbed the young Jedi, whose knighting day should have been a joyous one, of something.   


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We earn our rating in this chapter (also known as Oh my god you two, shut up and let me smut!)
> 
> Wathgwen, I literally literally couldn't do this without you. Thanks for the wine review! ;D

Obi-Wan despises this, Qui-Gon deduced as he half-dragged, half-carried his bumbling padawan towards the waiting chamber of the night of Contemplation. Being composed was so integral to him, and the last weeks, the persisting illness, and now the dreaded mind probe had truly left him bereft of self-authority. He could sense the younger man’s distorted mind fluttering around his center in the Force like a flock of disturbed sparrows.

 

If he had figured any other way, he would have raised his voice…although, after Obi-Wan's lecturing, he should take his padawan's self-determination into account.

 

Still. Had the probe gone on much further, he might have regressed to a familiar hissing match with the Council, embarrassing his recognition-seeking knight-in-waiting.

 

The waiting chamber was a sparse, cloistered room. It, however, contained one of the most sought after Temple luxuries: a private, though tiny, meditation garden, a courtesy for knights-in-waiting who were supposed to spend their night deep in meditation. Obi-Wan beckoned weakly toward the funnel-shaped garden, more a high-walled greenhouse. Qui-Gon supported him under the hybrid weeping willow, which took up most of the space, moving branches out of their way like they were a string door curtain. Above them, coruscanti night fell, but the tree covered them in a stifling dusk after a sunny day, blocking the light pollution.

 

Obi-Wan drew himself up to the meditation position the second Qui-Gon released his grip. His breathing didn’t settle as his mind reverted. Besides, Obi-Wan clasped his hands together on his lap to make them stop shaking. The gesture was overt, and unlike him.

 

Qui-Gon should have left the knight-in-waiting to his own devices for the night. Tradition dictated the candidate spend the night in isolation, in contemplation and reminiscence, opening themselves up the Force and indefinite possibilities of the future, readying for the final ruling.

 

He folded himself opposite Obi-Wan.

 

“Can you verbalize?” he asked quietly. “Tell me about the circumstances, center yourself.”

 

“Coruscant. Night after my evaluation. The waiting chamber for knights-in-waiting. Master, I’m so sorry. I thought I had it under control, had it assimilated, I was so _sure._  Master Yoda showed me how wrong I was. I thoug-- I don’t know what I thought.” The tremor extended also to his voice, and Qui-Gon’s worry grew. Gone were intricate, lovingly crafted walls of his mind; the mind probe had left an evasive, indecipherable chaos in its wake.    

 

Qui-Gon took Obi-Wan’s smaller, cold hands in his own and rubbed them briskly. “The ploughing of your mind left you overwhelmed. It does that to everyone, there’s no shame in that. It’s no wonder master Windu’s declaration went over your head. They recognized your Trial, they recognized it victorious. Your prodigy, your skills brought you through. They recognized it.”

 

Even as Qui-Gon spoke, Obi-Wan shook his head uncoordinatedly.

 

“You don’t understand. They won’t allow it now, not when master Yoda _saw_ \--- they cannot make me a knight. I meditated, I recognized my past missteps and _accepted_ them, thought I had assimilated them, and still, it wasn’t enough. I have failed you and our teachings, I’ll bring shame upon you ---”

 

“Center. Deep breaths, with me. In, hold, hold, hold, release. Again,” Qui-Gon kept his voice low and firm, but in truth he was at a loss in the face of Obi-Wan’s panic-stricken conviction that he had somehow failed this last step. Could his grandmaster have been so careless that it had caused some lingering confusion or damage? It didn’t seem likely.

 

“Obi-Wan, nothing the Council or master Yoda said indicates this sort of adversity. If Yoda had found out that some Darkness from vergence had a hold on you, he is under oath to say so.”

 

Whatever reaction to his words Qui-Gon had anticipated, Obi-Wan’s wild, alien laugh was not it.

 

“Vergence!” his padawan panted. “Like that would be the source of--” He gasped greedy lungfuls of air and visibly impelled himself to quiet. “Why I thought it would never catch up with me, I--” he sneered at himself.

 

Qui-Gon, alarmed, felt his hackles rise. “If you’re tired of rolling around in self-pity, I could use an explanation for these delusions,” he snapped, and regretted it instantly as his padawan turned his gaze at him. Obi-Wan’s eyes looked haunted.

 

“You truly don't, master. This is below our teachings-- ”

 

“By the Force, Obi-Wan. I won't give you orders ever again, not in this place or outside, but don’t let unfounded fears dictate you. Now, an explanation, if you please.”

 

The young knight-in-waiting shuddered and closed his eyes. Words seemed to fight him every step of the way, scraping his throat.

 

“You don’t-- “

 

“Whatever it is that you are carrying. I promise, this time.”

 

His knight-in-waiting struggled and tussled with words, his courage prevailing as always.

 

“Theed was not Bandomeer. It was New Apsolon,” he rasped.

 

Instead of warming, the cold transferred from Obi-Wan’s hands to Qui-Gon’s with a sickening rush.

 

“What?” he whispered.

 

Obi-Wan slumped forward, a man waiting for a coup-de-grace.

 

“I touched the Dark. You were dying. I offered everything within my rights to save you, not caring what took me, if vergence shred me apart. I didn’t acknowledge it, my feelings, in the past, I thought I had released them to the Force. But by denying it, I let something fester in me. It was the strangest thing, but it also saved me when the vergence threatened to take me, and afterwards in the coma. I woke up when I accepted this, that this would always be a crack in my chassis, that I would always be this step short from a good Jedi. I _wanted_ it to be so.”     

 

Obi-Wan opened his eyes, and under the shelter of leaves, their color was one Qui-Gon had never seen before in all their years together.

 

“In that protected, innermost part of ourselves we never let anyone to see. Look at that part of me, and there you stand. I don't understand. Master Yoda pried me open and would still deem me worthy of knighthood when all I have learnt is that I will rather rip myself from the fabric of the universe than let you go from my heart.”

 

Before Qui-Gon, thunderstruck, managed even to form a thought, the mutable, shifting chaos of Obi-Wan’s mind fell away with a violent wrench. Beneath burned a flame so bright it ran across the bond like the binding between their minds was made of gunpowder.

 

 _He carries my heart. He burns_ _for me._   

 

The planet tilted on its axis.

 

Obi-Wan swallowed with a click and the view closed off. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I-- before I have to go. I shouldn’t have done that.”

 

Qui-Gon’s hands moved on their own accord. They disentangled from Obi-Wan’s hands, and a resigned sound escaped from Obi-Wan at the loss of contact. Then the sound changed to surprised one when he framed his apprentice’s face with his hands and fitted their foreheads together. This was a raw thing, a horribly precious thing, how his own crooked nose rubbed bone-sharp at Obi-Wan's, how Obi-Wan's eyelashes were tinted with copper this close.

 

His hands felt so cold compared to the flame.

 

“My heart fell at the Theed.” It was his turn to rasp, not believing he was really doing this; words sounded foreign to him, like he was talking with a non-humanoid, scratching accent. “He fell from the platform, and I have never been so terrified. For, like he so cleverly put it, my blasted convictions made him face an ancient evil. I had to protect him. I ran ahead. That decision was almost both his downfall and mine.”

 

Obi-Wan huffed. “If this is your version of taking pity on me, don’t.”

 

He sent a memory through their bond, fed it to the flame. Himself, sitting next to Obi-Wan’s bed, head in his hands. Bowing, humbling himself before his hurt, scintillating padawan, before the knowledge that he had let fear determine his actions. Fear of his feelings, fear for his heart that now walked and breathed and lived outside of his body.

 

“Not pity, dear one,” he breathed.

 

Maybe it was the endearment. Obi-Wan closed the small distance between them and kissed him.

 

It was simply a pressure against his lips at first. Then Obi-Wan’s still-trembling hands found their way to Qui-Gon’s hair, and clutched. He moaned against Qui-Gon's lips, a low, broken sound, and that was simply intolerable, so he caught it with his tongue and swallowed it.

 

Then the kiss was a little explosion of hope.  

 

They swayed back and forth, both still on their knees, until Qui-Gon gave in and drew them backwards against a tree. He straightened his legs with a grunt and caught Obi-Wan, who had followed the kiss blindly and fallen forward. They ended up in a tangled heap, Qui-Gon’s face buried in Obi-Wan’s short crop of hair and Obi-Wan’s face pressed into his throat.

 

Obi-Wan’s hair smelled of Temple-standardized shampoo and coarseweave sheets left out in the sun and Obi-Wan. It was home.

 

His resourceful padawan took advantage of the situation quicker than him (he was still reeling from the contact, from the sensation of a body against a body with no pretense, no fight, no training, no context ready on his tongue). Small, warm kisses with gently scraping teeth  covered his neck. It was maddeningly good and simultaneously _not enough_ , and before he knew what he was doing Qui-Gon tilted his head back, offering better access. Obi-Wan let out a triumphant, small noise, and now there were definitely teeth involved.

 

The hanging leaves rustled in the Living Force, creating an illusion of privacy, of seclusion here at the heart of the Temple.

 

This full body contact, this impossible-to-believe wonder of Obi-Wan lying on top of him, made him first want to arch up and wrap his hand even tighter and _press._ Then he became aware how the younger man’s body was pulled tight, and there was a desperate, hurried quality to his kisses like he thought this could be taken from him in a flash.   

 

Qui-Gon threw his arms around him and forgot about pressing for a while. Instead, he ran long, slow caresses up and down Obi-Wan’s back. “None of this.”

 

Obi-Wan’s whole body shivered, but he settled a little, panting open-mouthed into his neck. He mumbled something against Qui-Gon’s skin.

 

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch that.”

 

“You,” Obi-Wan raised his head and glowered, “are way too lucid.” < _About the tightrope and losing one’s balance, master. If I was selfless enough, I would leave you in peace to reclaim it. > _

 

_ <I won’t let you sell yourself this short.> _

 

“Would you - would you let me see?” Qui-Gon hesitated, knowing he was asking an act demanding so much trust it made his ears ring oddly. “I refuse to believe anything Yoda saw in you would condemn you to nothing else than a hard climb back to the tightrope.” Losing balance between compassion and duty was easy, even for a trained Jedi in their private life and private thoughts; it was a matter of discipline and restoration, not outright expulsion, not without a taint of Dark, or their Order would be diminished indeed. How the Chosen One would achieve such a thing in the Force itself, in the Light, evaded him, made him worry for Anakin constantly.  

 

He felt Obi-Wan nodding into his neck.

 

Qui-Gon kept his progression slow, crawling. They had battered Obi-Wan’s mind enough for one day. He kept sliding his hands up and down Obi-Wan’s back, and the younger man curled up against him.

 

Layer after layer; even in quieting disarray, Qui-Gon couldn’t help but feel pride in his apprentice’s sophisticated shielding. And there, at the centre, burned a bright flame that had run along their bond and over his skin, without singeing.

 

How anybody could look at this fierce fire of Light, of justice, of compassion and think the darkness --- but there _was_ something there, hiding, just like Obi-Wan had said, something encapsulated. The cocoon had melted open, shimmering like iridescent petroleum, poignant, only a memento of what suppression had caused. In the remnant’s heart pulsated a power cell, a core, endlessly fueling the surrounding flame.     

 

Qui-Gon kept the image and passed it over the bond. Obi-Wan gasped. Qui-Gon felt giddy when he retreated. He buried his face again in Obi-Wan’s hair to stop himself from chuckling aloud.

 

“I didn’t see that the first time. I didn’t want to admit it existed. I bet it was hiding from me, the clever bastard,” Obi-Wan mumbled.

 

“Looks like I’m having company on my climb. It would have been lonely and windy without you,” Qui-Gon confessed with mirth.

 

Obi-Wan raised his head, his eyes and Force signature dancing. “Do we have to start the climbing tonight, master?”

 

Qui-Gon knew they should. They should have done all they could to avoid this kind of tanglement altogether, and had they failed, they should start restoring the balance; reporting themselves in, meditation, evaluation of their bond, separation until Obi-Wan’s knighting and preferably further, mind healers. The Order didn’t believe in privacy in these matters. They had been taught that since childhood.

 

He would do it. For the sake of Obi-Wan’s future.

 

But not tonight.

 

He repeated it out loud.

 

Obi-Wan smiled, sun-bright and sudden like these spring days, and when he had lost that smile from his life? During the calamity that was Yinchorr and its aftershocks? Even before that? It was inexcusable, to misplace something invaluable like that.

 

So he tried his best to keep this one safe, raising Obi-Wan’s face by placing two fingers under his chin and lifting gently, and then kissing him, etching features - the curve of half-smile, the taste of the dimple, the noise Obi-Wan made when Qui-Gon nipped his upper lip - to memory.

 

“I knew,” Obi-Wan interjected breathlessly between kisses, “that you would pull out something like this.”

 

“How so?” Qui-Gon asked, a good while later.

 

“It’s just like my maverick master,” a lengthy pause, “to conjure up something that makes me - makes me kick tradition in the teeth at the last possible minute.”

 

“It’s not tradition, it’s my nosy grandmaster I’m urging you to kick, and probably Mace too,” Qui-Gon admitted.

 

“My own,” and _,_ when they got more time, Qui-Gon swore to explore these most interesting reactions his knight-in-waiting exhibited when he used terms of endearment, “I have been assigned a joint mission with Mace. He and Depa came to some alarming conclusions on the background of the events on Tatooine. They are sending us to investigate. It’s probably a wild goose chase, and the trail is years old, but it’s the only lead about the Sith’s earlier machinations. Anything we might learn is valuable.”

 

Eyes, green like water surrounded by pine forest, gazed into Qui-Gon’s own. “It must be alarming, if Master Windu is sent out.”

 

“More like he’s sending himself out,” Qui-Gon muttered.

 

“Ah. So it _does_ affect Anakin,” Obi-Wan gathered.

 

“Yes,” he admitted. “That’s the reason I’m continuing alone from Tatooine, if the trail leads elsewhere. Anakin is far too young for his master to take part in a stealth mission.”

 

“That must be why they are still keeping everything under wraps. Wait. They’re sending you to track Sith alone? Undercover alone?” There was a dangerous glint in Obi-Wan's eyes.

 

“So it seems. The mission parameters are strictly for observation and identification, though. They want to keep up public appearances. And don’t be surprised if they declare a Trial for us before I go.”

 

“Of duty and attachment, I presume,” Obi-Wan concluded softly, and that tone always meant trouble. “After everything I’m, what, expected to let you walk into your first solo mission in years, undercover, not fully recovered, _alone_? Oh, that’s just -”

 

“Our duty,” Qui-Gon closed quietly, his mirth quickly dissolving. “Our Trial.”

 

Obi-Wan swallowed convulsively.  

 

“You know, I just might. Kick him, I mean. If he wasn’t so old he doesn’t have any teeth left,” he finally muttered.  

 

If that wasn’t only the half of the Trial, Qui-Gon would have found the mental image more entertaining.

 

“I won’t be here to see your recovery,” he said, hiding the spark of anger the thought caused deeply inside. “I’m surprised they are giving us the Knighting, to be honest. Some of them are so scared of-- anyway. I’m going to worry. They will probably send you on your first missions as a knight when I’m gone and you have recovered enough. I’ll miss that. I will miss your final growth into the knight you always promised to be. They haven’t designed this only for you, though I recognize the need of you to find your footing without me.”

 

Obi-Wan sighed and hid his face in Qui-Gon’s neck once more. For a while, Qui-Gon continued his slow, long caresses, but now they were as much for his sake as for Obi-Wan’s. <Y _our heartbeat, > _ Obi-Wan sent along the bond. < _It’s soothing. > _

 

Qui-Gon clutched him that much tighter.

 

Obi-Wan raised his head, eyes burning with the same fierce determination that always caught Qui-Gon’s breath for several years now.  “Well, if this is all they’re going to grant us, I am going to put my master’s teachings to good use.”

 

“Live in the moment with me,” Obi-Wan asked.

 

“Be very sure. This _is_ your night of Contemplation.”

 

“I am.” Serious eyes on him, serious, meditative young knight all of a sudden. “I may or not may become a knight, but this unsolidified place in time is mine, to make my own decision for the first time in years, maybe ever. I ask you again, with full intent. Share this place with me.”

 

All the future’s uncertainties and separations put aside, Qui-Gon did what his heart asked of him.    

 

The white robes of the knight-in-waiting were simpler by their design than their normal attire, reflecting the candidate's humble position. The belt and tabards gone, the cloth hung shapeless and flowing, slipping easily from Obi-Wan’s shoulders and arms, pooling down to his waist when he arched under Qui-Gon’s hands. _Always so responsive,_ Qui-Gon thought dazedly. Obi-Wan was such a _sight_ ; head thrown back, throat exposed, lips red-swollen and well-kissed (finally, like they should), blush  creeping down his neck and chest and teasingly vanishing below the waist. The damned clothing, always in the way. Qui-Gon was saved from tearing the ritual robes only because Obi-Wan growled impatiently, placed his hands on Qui-Gon’s shoulders for leverage and brought their hips together.

 

Even with layers of cloth between them, the contact surged white-hot up his spine. Qui-Gon made a sound like he'd been punched, so loud he knew the little garden echoed. His hands found the younger man’s hip bones, and clamped down hard. Obi-Wan moaned and undulated his hips slightly, eyes fluttering shut against the sensation. He was devastatingly, shield-crushingly beautiful, and Qui-Gon pushed his own hips up. His hardened cock brushed against Obi-Wan’s equally interested girth. The renewed contact was electrifying; the world whitened out at its edges for a moment. He reached up, blindly, and found an exposed nipple to lavish with his tongue.

 

All this, all this beauty and strength and response for him, it would uncover _anybody,_ Qui-Gon thought hazily as Obi-Wan shuddered and mewled under his tongue. His hips found new, faster rhythm, and -

 

“Slow down. Too much fabric. Need this not to be over yet,” Qui-Gon panted, releasing the protruding, deliciously pink nipple with reluctance, stilling Obi-Wan with his hands. The knight-in-waiting opened his eyes, and the shifting blue-green did things to Qui-Gon, made him want to possess, to hold unbearably close, to do all the things not proper for a Jedi master. _For me. Mine,_ his mind babbled frantically, and oh, they were on point for once, the Council and their Trials.                 

 

“Why master,” Obi-Wan had the audacity to actually purr, “I feel accomplished, for man of your age to say such a thing.”

 

“Impertinent,” he growled and brought their mouths together. “Less talk, less clothing,” he mumbled against his lips.

 

“You have to distract me, or it won’t happen,” Obi-Wan breathed, after they had lost a minute or two. His gaze shifted once again, into an odd combination of hunger and softness. “When did you know? How long?”

 

It was such a difficult question to answer that Qui-Gon felt his body to calm down a little as he began undressing. To spend years nurturing and teaching and observing, and realizing only afterwards that this gorgeous, talented young man had grown up and had found all the fractured and calloused parts of Qui-Gon’s life, and somehow mended them back together simply by existing, to the life that was now _theirs._       

 

“You were twenty-one, I think,” he answered, words rolling from his tongue slowly, drunkenly. “The first year I realized you were becoming more of a partner than a padawan. That mission on Sareth-Cor had everything: court chicanery, political corruption, bounty hunters, daring sword-fights and last-minute rescues. You handled all of it with such ease; no matter the situation, you were in charge of yourself and everybody else, peaceful, purposeful, dashing. It felt like I had been in the dark for years. Everybody fell for you, everybody strived for your approval. You handled everything with such grace and skill and genuine attention. I was jealous long before I recognized the feeling.”

 

Obi-Wan had retreated a little from their embrace, and was removing his lighter in-Temple boots, but now he froze. “You went on sabbatical to Auratera after Sareth-Cor,” he remembered.

 

“Yes. Spent weeks in the wilderness convincing myself it was just an unexpected reaction for you growing up and being very competent under my nose without me noticing. All of it flew out the window the minute I came back home and found you asleep on the couch. Nothing was out of the ordinary and I could have choked on my feelings for you. It has been a constant battle for balance ever since,” Qui-Gon smiled ruefully before he lost sight of Obi-Wan as he drew his undershirt over his head. He placed it next to him, to the blithely disregarded pile, suddenly avoiding the other’s eyes. What if this was a recent development for Obi-Wan? What if he was disgusted by the thoughts of the very same man who was supposed to protect him from any harm?

 

Obi-Wan shuffled closer. “I never guessed. You never… I never knew,” he repeated.

 

Qui-Gon smiled again, but it turned out more of a grimace. “It was the goal. I’m your master for a little while yet. It was bad enough that I had these thoughts, but without warning you now held my heart within you and I was death-scared, in addition. I’m good at hiding in plain sight for my size.”

 

The younger man pushed back onto his lap, naked save for his underwear, and when _that_ had happened? “You’re not allowed to hide anymore. Let me,” Obi-Wan breathed, nimble fingers already unbuttoning the trousers. “I was nineteen,” he continued, and Qui-Gon had to use a remarkable amount of his willpower to concentrate on his words and not on the feel of Obi-Wan’s fingers so tantalisingly close, the touch so light. Nineteen?! Force.

 

Their mingled breathing was suddenly again heavy, filling up the whole space under the rustling willow. “What? Don’t laugh, master, I was a late bloomer. I already knew by then that you were my world, had known for years, but on ninth month that year you had me practising knight Niiriinskje’s kata.” Obi-Wan tapped his pelvis lightly, and obediently, Qui-Gon pushed up from the ground and Obi-Wan pulled his trousers out of the way, near to his knees. His more than half-hard cock sprung free in his underwear. Obi-Wan made a hungry sound, and Qui-Gon almost lost it then and there. Obi-Wan settled back in, flinging strong legs on both sides of Qui-Gon’s lap.

 

“That kata is so precise, so restricted, its passion held on such a tight leash,” he bowed down and murmured to Qui-Gon’s ear. “You had to instruct me so closely, had to stand behind me chest to back and guide me with your hands, like you hadn’t had to do in years. Afterwards, I threw some pathetic excuse at you that I can’t believe you bought, hurried back to my room, and touched myself, like I never felt much interest to do before. I imagined your hands instead of my own.” He leaned impossibly closer, lips grazing Qui-Gon’s earlobe. “Tell me, did you touch yourself when you thought of me? Ever, master?”

 

What little was left of Qui-Gon’s restriction snapped. “Yes. Gods forgive me, _yes,”_ he growled, drawing the younger man closer and biting his own admissions down into the juncture of Obi-Wan’s neck and shoulder. “I gave it to the Force again and again, until my insides were like an inside out, wrung out robes. You persisted, you - always - persisted.”

 

“I was - of course - so ashamed after. Wasn’t - being - a perfect padawan,” Obi-Wan gasped between Qui-Gon’s alternating bites and soothing laps with his tongue. “Tried - to fuck - it out of my system.” Stars and Sith, what it did to him, the way that core-world accented voice enunciated ‘fuck’.

 

“Didn’t - work. - Always - your hands, no matter who. Wasn’t fair. Stopped trying - altogether. Suppressed, tried to forget - oh, _gods_!” Obi-Wan’s voice broke into a sob, when Qui-Gon’s fingers trailed the waistband of his underwear, asking for permission, and slipped in.

 

Coarse, russet pubic hair. Lean, wiry, like the lithe young man writhing in his arms in this night detached from everything mundane. And weeping for him, the head slick with pre-come as he stroked it with his forefinger. His own cock jumped, and for a moment all Qui-Gon could sense was his blood pounding _for me, for me,_ in his ears.

 

Obi-Wan whined as if in response; probably he was responding, probably Qui-Gon’s hold of the training bond was tenuous at best in this moment. < _Ye_ _s. For you. > _came the answer, confirming his suspicion, and the next moment Obi-Wan was projecting, sending his perspective along the bond.

 

Qui-Gon, under him, back against the trunk, scarred chest heaving, hair in disarray, staring up to him with eyes that looked indigo blue in the artificial dusk under the leaves, skin radiating warmth that made Obi-Wan want to burrow inside. Large, calloused, skilled hands exploring him, feels so good, gods, hands he had imagined--  

 

With another sob, Obi-Wan wrenched Qui-Gon’s hand from his underwear. He raised the hand in front of his face, licked the palm with even, broad strokes, and then he sucked three fingers into his mouth, humming as he tasted his own pre-come.

 

Although it had been years, Qui-Gon was sure he had never made that kind of sound in his _life_. He caressed Obi-Wan’s cheek with his two free fingers, felt the younger man swallowing, how saliva nonetheless trickled down from the corner of his mouth.

 

“Gods, your mouth,” he whispered. Three years worth of released dreams, haunted by that mouth _._

 

Obi-Wan released his fingers with a moist pop. “Your hand. Together,” he slurred, reddened lips glistening slightly.

 

The last pieces of clothing tucked down, out of the way; it was awkward for a moment, uncharted and fumbling. Then, as Qui-Gon’s hand closed around them both, Obi-Wan’s cock sliding against his and both of them hissing from the contact and smearing slickness from both of them, they created a rhythm, like they had done in fight, in salles, in their everyday life before Naboo, reclaiming.

 

The world shrunk down to sensations, to heat, to friction, to reciprocal push and pull, to moans and grunts, to Obi-Wan’s hot mouth against his, moaning into him, his hands clawing Qui-Gon’s upper arms for balance, leaving marks, he _wanted_ them to leave marks.

 

The pressure was coiling in Qui-Gon’s abdomen like a desert snake, ready to strike. He forced his eyes open, drunk at the sight of Obi-Wan above him, lost in pleasure, uncontrolled in a way nobody, nobody had the privilege to see but him. It should have been blasphemy; it was benediction.

 

“Let me catch you,” he rasped, speeding up his hand, running his thumb over and over the the sensitive underside of the glans.  

 

Obi-Wan let out a single wail, bucked up into his fist once, twice, the rhythm faltering. His cock jerked and the warm wetness spilled into Qui-Gon’s fist, Obi-Wan’s face going slack with pleasure, his pleasure echoing in the Force around them.

 

It was more than enough to trip him over the edge, the snake uncoiling and springing to attack. The Force erupted into a kaleidoscope of static and shades of white, his own orgarsm flooding over him with a force he didn’t remember from the distant past.  

 

There’s this thing Jedi call compassion, Qui-Gon thought as they lay in each other’s arms, Obi-Wan collapsed on the top of him, sweat and semen sticky between their bodies in the warm night air. Compassion is duty, a teachable skill a Jedi can and should apply to everything from the passing acquaintances they meet on their missions to the weak and deluded enemies, blinded by greed and self-interest. It was a comfort, something solid and measured, like a sturdy meal after a long day.

 

And then there’s _this,_ what is inexorable. It’s your pulse, your instinct, your sweat, your hunger cramps, it’s those little firing synapses in your brain, those abrasions on your toes, it’s your breathless, unceasing heart, wanting, wanting, wanting.

 

“I have no idea how to balance you” he breathed. To have this, all this, and walk away… Should he laugh or cry, he didn’t know, but it sure was what he had thought a long-lost feeling for a master, to feel this much unlearned. It was dizzying to admit it aloud.     

 

“I’m… glad to hear that,” Obi-Wan admitted, head resting on his shoulder. He turned his head and faced Qui-Gon. In his eyes, the softest color Qui-Gon had seen only on rare occasions, only a hint of grey; watching over the sleeping crechelings, caught unawares on an uncommonly lazy morning, a stubborn tooka kitten attacking his boots, that one time Obi-Wan had untangled his hair after a six-week swamp planet mission.

 

“I believe in the Code.” Obi-Wan spoke in hushed tones. “But I also believe in this. More than believe, I cannot distinguish this, how we are, and myself. It’s attachment. I cannot separate that from me. I don’t know what to do. But I’m selfishly glad you’re in this with me.”

 

“You give yourself too little credit,” Qui-Gon’s hold firmed. He was able to do this, to touch like this, to hold Obi-Wan like this--it made him feel he could vocalize the tune of the Living Force, solve all old unsolvable koans, face whatever the Dark chose to throw at them. “You’ve been my beacon by simply being who you are long before this.”

 

Their training bond plucked like a string from Obi-Wan’s end. He had held words, among other things, too close to his chest in his fear, before and after he had realized his feelings.

 

“Perhaps,” he began carefully, fumbling after the mischievously twinkling Force for reassurance,  “we have to learn to live with two incompatible pieces. Beings outside the Order live with these dichotomies all the time, for the galaxy is full of terrors and wonders.”

 

_“Inciter. Wallowing in your emotions and connections. Dabbling in grey. Leading your padawan astray.”_

 

_Shut up master, I’m trying to listen to the Force._

 

“I have always stood firm behind what I once decided was right. I see now that I haven’t always taken into account the ever-changing nature of the galaxy. Many don’t want to acknowledge this, because they want the Light to be absolute. It makes everything uncertain. Like we should, stars forbid, live in the gutter with the rest of dwellers.” The Force was beckoning.

 

Obi-Wan snorted quietly. “I can already see quite a few masters and knights digging out smelling salts and pitchforks.” An endearing, familiar thinking frown appeared between his apprentice’s eyebrows. Earlier, he had always given up the desire to kiss it away.

 

“I might be one of them, without you. Had you died, had that cocoon never broken, kept myself convinced it was the right way. But this, us, this isn’t some principle. This is tangible. And real.” Obi-Wan gulped and buried his face in Qui-Gon’s neck. “Be real,” he whispered.

 

“Dear one, it is. It stays.” Qui-Gon planted light kisses on Obi-Wan’s temple, willing the frown to go away. “We learn how to live with the contradiction, how to balance. In this, there is no padawan and master, no knight or master, only two learners.”

 

“The Trial. With you,” came the fervent whisper.

 

“Yes. With you,” he promised, just before Obi-Wan’s mouth found his.


	5. Chapter 5

Qui-Gon left two hours before sunrise, leaving a rumpled, but serene, knight-in-waiting behind him, kneeling on the grass in the first gray shimmer of morning light, white robes glowing. He looked like out the myth, the spring dawn personified. He had to stoop down and claim those lips one last time. The kiss was chaste but bubbling with restricted emotions, and when he withdrew, a slight smile played on Obi-Wan’s face, his knight-in-waiting already sinking down to meditation.

 

The candidate who appeared in front of the ring consisting Council and his master, in unison with the first ray of the rising sun, was in total control of himself, white robes impeccable, not a single hair out of place. Although Qui-Gon knew Obi-Wan honored tradition with his appearance, he couldn’t help but compare it to the man in his arms last night, alive and vibrant in the Living Force. He knew which one he preferred, but he now belonged to both of them.

 

Last night. It felt like a fever dream, a vision, summoned up by the deepest wishes of his subconscious.

 

This moment, however, was neither sudden or unpredicted, but the result of many years of learning, laughter, tears and sweat. It would do well for him to concentrate on the present moment.

 

“Who comes seeking Light?” the beginning of the ritual rang throughout the chamber.

 

The white-clothed figure executed a perfect, deep bow, sleeves touching the floor. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, padawan of Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn. I come seeking the Light, the will of the Force revealed.”

 

“Do you pledge for this seeker, master of the Order?”

 

“I pledge for him,” Qui-Gon answered, and in one, fluid motion, sabers were drawn into open in the circle. A sharp stab of unadulterated incredulity ran through the training bond, lasting maybe a quarter of second before it was mercilessly crushed beneath shielding. Some small, deeply hurt, deeply hidden part of his capable padawan had refused to believe this would actually happen previous to this very moment. That he had failed. That they would be separated.

 

He had come here with effortless calm and acceptance nonetheless.

 

Qui-Gon threw caution to the wind. Pride was unbecoming for Jedi, but he opened the bond for the whole Temple, no, for whole Coruscant to see, flooded it with his pride and confidence, immersing Obi-Wan in his delight, Council be damned. The young knight practically shone in the Force, competing with the rising sun.

 

“We are all Jedi. The Force speaks through us. Through our actions, the Force proclaims itself--”

 

The last part of the long-lasting wound, infected by Xanatos’ betrayal and relentlessly mended by Obi-Wan through their years together, closed once and for all when his grandmaster called Obi-Wan in front of him. Qui-Gon’s eyes blurred, and he didn’t resist, but let it flow through him, setting it free only after feeling it fully.

 

His Spitfire, his late Spring. Honored despite Qui-Gon’s shadow.

 

“ --I dub thee Jedi, Knight of the Republic. Obi-Wan Kenobi, rise.”

 

The young knight stood, took up his lightsaber and exited the chamber in a benevolent silence. Qui-Gon followed him, his pace unhurried. Obi-Wan’s smile could have powered the planet when he embraced him at the waiting chamber.

 

***

 

As expected, they were called back only shortly after. Grave-looking Adi Gallia plainly proclaimed their Trial, and neither knight or master found strength to look caught off guard. Final briefing for master Jinn and master Windu’s mission began directly afterwards, sending knight Kenobi to the long wait at the hangar bay.

 

***

 

The morning was unusually polluted. Some piece or other in the magnificent, climate controlling hardware was malfunctioning, and the early morning light was uncharacteristically muted, pale and colorless behind the foul gossamer of clouds.

 

Obi-Wan Kenobi, a Jedi knight now by hours more than minutes, stood at the outer edge of the hangar bay, crisp wind in his hair (but not swinging his severed braid, no, he clasped that in his saberhand), and low-key wished his mind could possess the same qualities as light; obscurity, ability to hide and tone it down.

 

He hadn't gone and changed his white robes, had thought he didn't have time, and now he felt a touch out of place.

 

There was always too little time in the galaxy, it was nothing new. Too little time for grand things, sure, to save everybody, too little time to stop all the explosions, too little time to negotiate a satisfying solution. Too little time for small things too, to share tea, to pick loose threads from another’s cloak, to catch yourself smiling, inadvertent, when the other stumbles and hits his toe and curses after a long, long day. Still, they had created their own pocket of stolen time outside of the current, carved it into existence by the sheer force of will of his master and his own, desperate-tinged stubbornness.

 

It wasn’t enough. Twelve years with the man weren’t enough. After last night, nothing less was enough.

 

Attachment, undeniable.

 

 _Your Trial is going pretty great, Kenobi,_ he observed dryly to himself.

 

The ship had arrived and landed, and the bleary-eyed pilot had already come to check the landing platform twice, obviously used to dealing with the Order, and confused by the erratic schedule. The briefing was running unusually late.  

 

 _Help me now,_ he begged, reaching for the Force, letting it course through him and sweep his anxiety and longing along with it instead of burying, wiser now for the recent revelations about the depths of his psyche. He imagined a limpid stream and dove in. The waters of the Force were cool, but the clarity brought comfort.

 

 _The Force is always with you, padawan,_ came the whisper, the memory.     

 

At last, Qui-Gon arrived with master Windu and Anakin, who had remained hidden during these last few weeks. The master-padawan pair stopped at the foot of the ship’s ramp. Master Windu kneeled opposite his padawan, his gaze intent. Anakin was bristling, Obi-Wan could see even from this distance, his Force presence even more all over the place than usually, reflecting conflicting emotions. Qui-Gon passed them at a steady pace, and came to stand next to him on the rim. They watched the awakening megalopolis side by side.

 

It was difficult to speak, out here in the open and not in their sanctuary, when the words you needed didn’t belong to the Jedi vocabulary.

 

Every freshly knighted Jedi decided individually what they wanted to do with their braid or its equivalent.

 

Obi-Wan seeked refuge of the ritual, hoping it would cover him - them? - enough out here. He turned, bowed and offered his hand. _Force, hold me through this._

 

“You have carried me in the Light, taught me, guided me, sheltered me. Allow me to express my gratitude. This belongs to you.”

 

Qui-Gon kept gazing at the cityscape for a beat or two before he turned, faced him, and solemnly nodded his acceptance. He took Obi-Wan’s offered hand in both of his. Large, callused, impossibly warm ( _skin radiating warmth under him - stop._ ) in the brisk wind. The pale morning light brought out the grey streaks in Qui-Gon’s hair.

 

“This is as long as I walk with you. Knight of the Order, I will release you from your vow and your bond to me. Go forward and grow evermore in Light.” Qui-Gon’s voice betrayed nothing as the ritual proceeded.

 

The blood buzzed in his ears as Obi-Wan bowed his head again, giving his permission to begin. His master’s mind brushed against his for the last time. Qui-Gon closed his eyes, clasped Obi-Wan's braid-holding hand tighter, and began to unravel the precious connection between them one slim thread at the time.  

 

They would fulfil the first step of the Trial. They would extricate each other and would not latch on, would not place this above their duty.

 

The threads loosened and disappeared into the calmly waving Force around them with one last glint, like a farewell.

 

< _Master! Qui-Gon! > _ he sent, desperation emerging out of nowhere. Already it was difficult, the static of millions of lives and tens of thousand Force-sensitives surging up to fill the growing space between them. < _When all that is demanded of us is said and done. Come back safely. To me. > _

 

His master’s eyes flew open, wide and astonished. Without a word, he raised Obi-Wan’s hand to his lips and kissed the edges of his knuckles, lingering there. Dry lips, moving like he was forming words against his hand.

 

The tidal wave of his master’s emotions crashed through the weakening bond, longing and desire and _love,_ certain and heavy like mountains, like planets. He opened his shields and let his own fire answer for him.

 

The declining bond couldn’t withstand the deluge from the both sides. It dismantled on its own now, gathering speed. His instincts told him to grab it, stop the avalanche, rebuild and heal and protect. He swayed and Qui-Gon swayed with him, still painfully in sync. He forced small, sharp stones back down from his throat.    

 

When all that was left of the bond was one, shining thread, Qui-Gon lunged after it in the Force without warning. In what was an astonishing display of skill and Force manipulation, Jedi master stabilized that last ribbon, coaxing and forging and planting until it stood fixed, shivering.         

 

They looked at each other. It was one flimsy thread, soon to be stretched impossibly thin by the distance and star systems between them, not good for anything. It didn’t make communication or exchange of any kind of information possible, it simply existed, until one of the myriad reasons it would snap reached either of them.

 

Qui-Gon lowered Obi-Wan’s hand from his lips and gently pried his fingers open, taking an almost waist-length, coiled braid from his palm before the wind got its way. He raised it to his lips again, briefly, and put it into the pocket next to his lightsaber in his utility belt. Obi-Wan’s hand fell uselessly to his side.

 

“May the Force be with you, knight.” < _Dearest one. > _It was a whisper, a mere sigh, using unthreaded passageways, soon impossible.

 

“And with you, master.” < _Beloved. It has always meant that. > _He wasn’t sure if Qui-Gon could hear him anymore.

 

Qui-Gon turned and without looking back, strode to the ramp where master Windu stood waiting. The pilot’s annoyance at the procrastinating Jedi who couldn’t manage their goodbyes in time colored the Force as the two masters disappeared inside the hull.

 

Anakin had snuck next to him without him noticing, which revealed far too much about his mental state. Boy’s eyes were also glued to the engine-roaring ship.

 

The wind really was crisp, and the repulsors added to it. Obi-Wan blinked repeatedly against the rising sun and put his hand on Anakin’s shoulder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh. Sorry?
> 
> The third, and last, part is at the writing and plotting stages.


End file.
